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1. Producing Ignorance Through Regulatory Structure: The Case of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS)

   https://doi.org/10.1177/0731121420964827  

   Richter, Lauren; Cordner, Alissa; Brown, Phil (August 2021, Sociological Perspectives)

   null (Ed.)

   This article examines how ignorance can be produced by regulatory systems. Using the case of contamination from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), we identify patterns of institutionalized ignorance in U.S. chemical regulation. Drawing on in-depth interviews and archival research, we develop a chemical regulatory pathway approach to study knowledge and ignorance production through the regulatory framework, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Investigating TSCA’s operation, we consider why PFAS were relatively recently recognized as a significant public health threat, despite evidence of their risks in the 1960s. The historical context of TSCA’s enactment, including the mobilization of the chemical industry, contributed to the institutionalization of organizational practices promoting distinct types of ignorance based on stakeholder position: chemical manufacturers who have discretion over knowledge production and dissemination, regulators who operate under selective ignorance, and communities and consumers who experience nescience, or total surprise. 

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2. “Caregiving Youth” and the Patchwork History of Recognition in the United States

   https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20206920  

   Olson, Elizabeth; Edmonds, Leiha (October 2023, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health)

   This article examines the U.S. legislative and policy landscape and its historical and contemporary recognition of young people as caregivers and their importance to public health, both as care providers and as a category of special concern for overall wellbeing. Drawing on feminist geographies of health to situate a historical analysis, we aim to answer two key questions: First, what is the history of recognition of caregiving youth in key moments of federal action to address family caregiving needs? Second, how might we use this history to better understand and analyze the patchwork geography of caregiving youth recognition in the U.S. and other countries that similarly lack formal national policy recognition to improve and enhance public health? We use the term patchwork to describe how federal recognition of caregiving youth in broader debates about public health is uneven across both time and space, and contingent upon civil society, non-profit organizations, and researchers working in and with geographically bound communities. Our results illustrate how a focus on the relationships of recognition, both in the past and the present and at local and national scales, reveals a different perspective on caregiving youth in the U.S. with a much more complex history than previously identified. The article describes how relationships established in the absence of federal policy or legislation are sometimes directed towards building more formal recognition, and other times with the goal of changing practices in a specific location. 

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3. Diverse stakeholders and their interests matter to the U.S. Forest Service: a network of action situations analysis of how stakeholders affect forest plan outcomes.

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-022-01173-4  

   Baldwin, E; McLaughlin, D. M.; Jasso, V.; Woods, D.; Breshears, D. D.; López-Hoffman, L.; Soto, J. R.; Swann A.; Lien, A. (July 2022, Sustainability science)

   Since the 1980s, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) has transformed from an agency predominantly focused on timber production to one focused on recreation and ecosystem management. This shift is particularly remarkable because it occurred without major substantive national forest policy changes. During this period, many national forests changed their forest planning processes in ways that provided greater opportunity for public input into forest plans, and in 2012 the USFS issued new planning rules that institutionalized these practices. In this study, we ask: how has the planning process changed over time, and how have these changes shaped forest plan outcomes? To answer these questions, we conduct a comparative case study of two national forests—the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit and the Inyo National Forest—that produced forest plans in the 1980s and again in the 2010s. We use the Network of Action Situations (NAS) approach to compare planning processes over time and across forests. We find that in addition to the changes mandated by the 2012 rules, both forests developed a series of forums to engage the public in plan development and review, and that increased stakeholder engagement has helped shape forest priorities. These findings suggest that greater involvement by regional stakeholders could pressure the USFS to adopt more regional approaches for addressing challenges like climate change and wildfire risk. 

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4. Trailblazer women in the Supreme Court of Canada

   https://doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2021.1946098  

   Johnson, Susan W; Masood, Ali S (March 2023, Politics, Groups, and Identities)

   How do judges decide issues of equality? While prior scholarship demonstrates that judicial attributes such as partisan identification, gender, race, age, and career backgrounds help elucidate judicial decision-making, considerably less attention has been devoted to how judicial empathy may influence or condition judicial decision-making. Such scholarly attention is especially lacking in the study of courts outside of the United States. To bridge this critical gap, we examine how judicial empathy affects decision-making behavior by analyzing data from the Supreme Court of Canada from 1982 to 2015. We find compelling evidence that trailblazer women’s unique personal experiences exert a strong influence on judicial behavior within the Canadian Supreme Court. In fact, our findings demonstrate that the effects of judicial empathy extend across a broader array of discrimination cases in Canada compared to previous findings on the American courts. We find that trailblazer women have a greater propensity to vote in favor of discrimination claimants compared to their male peers. Normatively, these effects manifest as judicial empathy in discrimination cases where trailblazers themselves likely faced upward mobility challenges. 

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5. Prosecutors as punishers: A case study of Trump-era practices

   https://doi.org/10.1177/14624745231166311  

   Lynch, Mona (December 2023, Punishment & Society)

   Recent punishment and society scholarship has addressed the limits of policy reforms aimed at reducing mass incarceration in the U.S. This work has focused in particular on the political dimensions of penal legal reform and policy-making, and the compromises and shortcomings in those processes. Nearly absent in this scholarship, however, has been empirical and theoretical engagement with the role of front-line prosecutors as facilitators and/or resistors to downsizing efforts. Using the case of the U.S. federal criminal legal system's modest efforts to decrease the system's racially disparate and punitive outcomes, this paper elucidates the fragile nature of such reforms by delineating the critical role that front-line prosecutors play in maintaining punitive approaches. Focusing specifically on federal prosecutorial policy and practices in the Trump era, I draw on a subset of data from an interdisciplinary, multi-methodological project set in distinct federal court jurisdictions in the U.S. to examine how front-line prosecutors were able to quickly reverse course on reform through the use of their uniquely powerful charging and plea-bargaining tools. My findings illustrate how federal prosecutors pursued more low-level defendants, and utilized statutory “hammers,” including mandatory minimums and mandatory enhancements to ensure harsh punishments in a swift return to a war-on-crime. 

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