Publications:

“Bearing Witness to Asylum Seekers in an Era of Misinformation:  The Transformation of Pro Bono Direct Legal Services into Social Change Activism”Law & Society Review, forthcoming 2026 (available online via FirstView).

Providing pro bono legal services is an important professional obligation that ensures that people who cannot afford representation still realize their rights. Unlike impact litigation, which seeks to overturn unjust laws or create new rights, pro bono direct legal services are not typically seen as oriented toward creating social change. Drawing on longitudinal interviews with thirty-six lawyers and non-lawyer legal volunteers, this article explores how bearing witness became a mechanism that blended pro bono services with social movement-like collective action to transform direct legal services within two liminal legal environments, the U.S.–Mexico border and immigration detention. These activities included (1) asserting and publicizing truth in the face of misconceptions and misinformation so the American public understood what was occurring and demanded policy change, (2) recruiting more volunteers to assist asylum seekers and in turn speak out, and (3) documenting the human impact of immigration laws and policies to ensure future harms would not occur. Because interviewees took part in up to three waves of interviews between 2019 and 2023, I also address the perceived outcomes of these efforts, including that interviewees felt that they increased knowledge and shifted some individuals’ perspectives.

[Book Review] Handcuffs and Chain Link: Criminalizing the Undocumented in America. Rutgers Crim. L & Crim. Just. Books Online (2019) (invited contribution)

“Is There a Canon in Law and Society?” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 9 (2013) (with Carroll Seron and Susan Coutin).

As an interdisciplinary field, law and society has an ambivalent relationship with the notion of a canon: Being a field requires having a recognized set of key texts, even as this particular field’s critique of doctrinal legal analysis creates an openness toward alternative perspectives. Within the interdisciplinary field of law and society itself, there is debate about the breadth of disciplines relevant to this domain of inquiry. To explore this tension, we analyze three sources: (a) addresses delivered by presidents of the US Law and Society Association (LSA), (b) LSA meeting calls, and (c) law and society/social science syllabi. Presidential addresses and meeting calls demonstrate how the boundaries of the field are established and contested, and course syllabi suggest a degree of consensus about key works. We conclude by discussing other national and regional research traditions and note that these critique law and society/social sciences canons for being overly United States focused or Eurocentric. We argue that such contestation underscores the health and vibrancy of law and society research.

Working Papers:

“Forged in Defiance: How Threat to Professional Identity and Moral Shocks Shape the Development of Oppositional Consciousness Among Legal Allies”

Drawing on interview data, this article introduces the concept of threat to professional identity and shows how accusations of widespread asylum fraud by the first Trump administration, together with moral shocks, catalyzed lawyers’ and legal advocates’ identification with a broader social movement.

 “Beyond Emergence: Legal Allies and the Dynamics of Oppositional Consciousness over Time”

This article introduces a theory of allies’ oppositional consciousness across time. It explores the conditions under which oppositional consciousness can be sustained and intensify over time, yet how shifting political conditions can destabilize this consciousness.

“How Graduated Citizenship and Situational Determinants Shape the American Public’s Evaluations of ICE Encounters”

(with Luis Tenorio and Steven Karceski)

Using a conjoint survey experiment, we assess how the American public evaluates potential rights violations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. We find that perceptions of rights violations and support for deportation vary systematically along a status hierarchy from U.S.-born citizen to naturalized citizen, green card holder, employment visa holder, to undocumented person, a phenomenon we call graduated citizenship.

Works in Progress:

The Immigration Bar and Professional Threat

Building on “Forged in Defiance,” this study asks whether and how immigration attorneys’ responses to professional threat vary by organizational setting, area of specialization within the immigration bar, and political ideology.

Mobilizing the Federal Tort Claims Act

Using textual analysis of Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) cases and interviews with attorneys bringing these claims, this project explores whether and how immigration-related FTCA litigation fulfills a dual function of providing individualized redress and acting as a mobilizing tool through which legal organizations have challenged immigration enforcement practices over time.

Book Project: Individualized Claims, Collective Resistance

Other Publications:

“Acting with Impunity: A Three-Part Series on Peacekeepers’ Involvement in Trafficking in Women in Bosnia and Herzegovina.” National Association of State Judicial Educators News Quarterly. Vol. 21, No. 1, 2 and 3 Winter 2006, Spring 2006 and Summer 2006.