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October 16 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm CDT

Speaker Series: 2024-26 Doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellows

Sino Esthappan, Robert Gelles, and Kyneshawau Hurd
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Hybrid: Virtual/In-Person (ABF Offices, 750 N Lake Shore Drive, 4th Floor Chicago, IL)

To register, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org. 

 

Sino Esthappan: “The Institutionalization of Algorithmic Risk Assessments in US Pretrial Hearings”

Across fields, organizations now increasingly adopt predictive algorithmic scoring systems to improve decision-making processes. Some studies find that these systems discipline workers by evaluating and directing their behaviors. Others show how, rather than unwittingly abiding by algorithmic directives, workers may appropriate these tools to accomplish specific goals and tasks. Yet the relational conditions under which actors follow or reject scores are not well understood, and we know little about how organizational networks shape algorithmic decision-making practices in multiprofessional expert fields. In this presentation, I will describe my dissertation project, which examines how actors in the US criminal court policy field negotiate different kinds of expertise to institutionalize risk assessment tools in pretrial hearings. I will explain my plans to use archival records, interviews, observations, and court transcripts to analyze how a wide multiprofessional field of national policy stakeholders and local criminal court officials makes sense of and justifies the use of varied risk assessment practices in pretrial hearings. I will conclude by discussing the implications of this research for criminal court policies and practices and scholarship on law, organizations, punishment, and technology.

Sino Esthappan is an ABF/Northwestern University Doctoral Fellow in Law & Social Science. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at Northwestern University.

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Robert Gelles: “Originalism in the Making: Language, Knowledge Practice, and Constitutionalism in the Conservative Judicial Audience”

Despite significant successes in pursuing its agenda, there remains dissent among the ranks of the Conservative Legal Movement (CLM). Intellectuals in the Movement have criticized the Supreme Court judgments that seem to achieve Conservatives’ political and legal priorities. One of their central criticisms is that the Court did not use the appropriate method of legal interpretation—it failed to abide by an Originalist Constitutional Theory. Recent social science scholarship has shown that intellectuals like these play a key role in CLM. As institution builders, conveners, teachers, and authors, Conservative legal scholars help to create and disseminate intellectual resources for litigation and judicial decisions, train a group of attorneys to take up the cause, and act as an audience for the judiciary and profession. At the heart of their activities is a discussion about the appropriate means of interpreting law, often centered on an argument about the nature of language. Drawing from participant observation, interviews with members of the Movement, and publicly posted footage of major events, I analyze the linguistic beliefs and behaviors by which these scholars perform their roles. By taking a semiotic approach, I aim to show how their linguistic beliefs and knowledge practices play a key role in shaping their particular and influential legal consciousness, as well as shaping their responses to ongoing legal action. Doing so, I suggest, offers an opportunity to re-conceptualize a defining feature of constitutionalism: the relationship between law and politics.

Robert Gelles is an ABF/University of Chicago Doctoral Fellow in Law & Social Science. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology at the University of Chicago. 

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Kyneshawau Hurd: “3D of Racial Justice: Diversity, Dominance & Discrimination. Implicit Social Dominance & The Diversity Principle-Policy Gap”

This work delves into the discord between the widely professed commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the United States and the persistent maintenance of racial hierarchies, a phenomenon described as the principle-policy gap. Challenging traditional notions of discrimination that link it solely to overt racism or covert prejudice, this study posits that the drive for hierarchy (or preservation of caste) is a subtler and perhaps more foundational force perpetuating racial inequalities. Further, this works argues that this hierarchy-preservation motivation may be especially important for understanding persistent inequality in outwardly egalitarian, pro-diversity, and racially positive contexts.
Thus, through a socio-psychological perspective, the research spotlights “implicit social dominance orientation” (ISDO)—an unconscious preference for hierarchical structuring of social groups—as a significant factor contributing to this gap. Across several studies, this work investigates the nuanced relationship between explicit and implicit social dominance orientations (SDO and ISDO, respectively) and their impact on support for racial diversity and justice policies. Drawing from Social Dominance Theory and recent advancements in implicit cognition, I develop a measure of ISDO and create four “Dominance Profiles”—a typology of group-based dominance motivations with implicit and explicit dimensions—to examine decision-making of those who explicitly disavow social dominance but implicitly endorse it.
This work further suggests that that diversity ideology, particularly when framed instrumentally, appeals to implicit dominance motivations and helps explain the principle-policy gap observed among egalitarians. We find evidence for the existence of ISDO and its influence on the decision-making of self-professed egalitarians. Those with higher levels of implicit social dominance (but not necessarily higher levels of racial antipathy) endorse policies that undermine racial justice efforts compared to True Egalitarians. Specifically, policy support of Implicit Dominants, those who explicitly endorse diversity and egalitarianism but implicit support hierarchy, is driven by perceptions of dominant-group benefit.
Our research highlights the importance of considering both implicit motivations and dominance motivations in understanding decision-making and behavior, particularly among self-identified egalitarians. These findings contribute to the broader discourse on diversity to advance a 3D framework for understanding racial inequality. This framework seeks to better account for Discrimination and the ways Diversity and Dominance contribute to contemporary manifestations of it that current legal frameworks may not appreciate.
Kyneshawau Hurd is the ABF Postdoctoral Fellow in Law & Inequality. She is a social psychologist and psychology and law scholar studying the intersections of diversity, dominance and discrimination. 
To read the related paper for Dr. Hurd’s presentation, reach out to Sophie Kofman or Dianna Garzón.