We analyzed the shifting cultural, political, and legal environment related to campus sexual assault through:
- Media coverage of campus sexual assault, with an emphasis on due process discourse
- Litigation targeted at schools in our sample
- Key political and legal events
- The perspective of key stakeholders through in-depth interviews
The Politics of “Private” Lawsuits: Identifying Countermovement Activity in the Case of Campus Sexual Assault
This paper (in progress) draws on an analysis of lawsuits, interviews with private attorneys, and media coverage to show how the routine legal practice of private attorneys can promote the goals of a wider social movement by shaping the public narrative about campus sexual assault.
Campus Sexual Assault, Criminalized Due Process, and the “Frail Twin” of Equality
A second paper in progress analyzes a systematic data set of Associated Press articles to examine how attorneys and journalists shape the legal environment in which universities operate by co-constructing narratives about campus sexual assault that simultaneously delegitimize civil rights approaches to addressing campus sexual assault and naturalize approaches that criminalize campus sexual assault.
Title IX, Due Process, and the Struggle Over Campus Sexual Assault
Our book, tentatively titled “Title IX, Due Process, and the Struggle Over Campus Sexual Assault,” investigates the politics of campus sexual assault from 2006 through 2020. The book examines how the attempt by feminists and the Obama administration to use the civil rights logic of Title IX to persuade universities to do more to prevent and respond to campus sexual misconduct sparked a powerful legal and political backlash. That backlash ultimately resulted in a new set of federal regulations mandating criminalized approaches to dealing with campus sexual violence that privilege the due process rights of accused students over the civil rights of survivors. This political contestation has set in motion processes of legalization that are now hard to reverse. Theoretically, we investigate processes of legal endogeneity in a politicized and constantly changing legal environment, where solutions proposed by compliance professionals are often challenged–rather than blessed–by the courts, and where social movements play a powerful role in shaping the legal environment in which universities operate.
Our related short paper, forthcoming in the American Journal of Sociology, examines the historical implementation and interpretation of Title IX as a means of addressing sex discrimination.
