Legal Framing
Pages | 25-59 |
Date | 29 April 2013 |
Published date | 29 April 2013 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/S1059-4337(2013)0000061005 |
Author | Gwendolyn Leachman |
LEGAL FRAMING
Gwendolyn Leachman
ABSTRACT
The sociological and socio-legal literatures on social movements have
identified three main types of ‘‘legal framing’’ in contemporary social
movement discourse: collective rights framing, individual rights
framing, and nationalistic legal framing. However, it is unclear from
the current research how movement actors decide which of these
framing strategies to use, under what circumstances, and to what
effect. In this article, I offer a model for future empirical research on
legal framing, which (1) distinguishes legal framing by its argumenta-
tive structure, ideological content, and remedy; and (2) analyzes how
a social movement’s internal culture and institutional environment
constrain the symbolic utility of particular legal frames and shape the
movement’s legal framing strategy. I argue that the alternative
approach offered here will help theorize how social movements strike
a balance between the institutional pressure to reproduce dominant
ideologies and the internal pressure to reform those ideologies. This
perspective thus helps build socio-legal theory on the relationship
between legal framing and social subordination, and on the conditions
under which movements will be able to inflect legal language with
insurgent social movement values.
Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Volume 61, 25–59
Copyright r2013 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited
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ISSN: 1059-4337/doi:10.1108/S1059-4337(2013)0000061005
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Socio-legal research on social movements increasingly analyzes the relation-
ship between law and social movements through the examination of
‘‘collective action framing,’’ a concept developed in sociological research to
describe the process wherein social movement actors deploy words, symbols
and other interpretive devices to impose political significance on social
situations or events (Beckett & Hoffman, 2005; Benford & Snow, 2000,
p. 614; Hagan, 2000; Hoffman, 2008; Levitsky, 2008; Morgan, 2004; Paris,
2001; Woolford & Wolejszo, 2006). The common use of ‘‘legal framing’’ in
socio-legal and sociological analyses of social movements is one of several
recent developments suggesting that the two fields are on the brink of
unification. Sociology journals are also publishing more articles on framing
that incorporate a socio-legal view of the law as a resource and cultural
force in social movements (Ferree, 2003; Hull, 2001; Pedriana & Stryker,
2004; Stern, 2005). Finally, truly integrative work has also emerged, which
draws from both literatures in a conscious effort to ‘‘elaborate them as a
single approach to studying the construction of grievances’’ (Jones, 2006;
Levitsky, 2008, p. 557; see also Marshall, 2003; Pedriana, 2006; Pedriana &
Stryker, 2004), the most comprehensive of which has been Pedriana’s (2006)
detailed roadmap for integrating the socio-legal and sociological literatures
on ‘‘legal framing’’ or ‘‘rights framing’’ (McCann, 1994, p. 234).
Together, the sociological and socio-legal literatures have contributed
important insights into how law shapes activists’ perceptions, tactics, and
ability to generate social change. However, the literatures remain surpris-
ingly independent bodies of research, each retaining a distinct theoretical
focus. Sociological research tends to examine how legal framing becomes a
dominant tactic, both within and among movements, and to link legal
framing to particular movement outcomes (Armstrong, 2002; Fetner, 2001;
McCammon, 2003, 2009; McCammon, Hewitt, & Smith, 2004; McCam-
mon, Muse, Newman, & Terrell, 2007;McVeigh, Welch, & Bjarnason, 2003;
Pedriana, 2006; Snow & Benford, 1992). Socio-legal research, on the other
hand, is more concerned with determining how the law becomes salient in
multiple social and cultural arenas (Coleman, Nee, & Rubinowitz, 2005;
Dudas, 2005, 2008; Goldberg-Hiller, 2002; Goldberg-Hiller & Milner, 2003;
Hull, 2001; Kostiner, 2003; Marshall, 2005; McCann, 1994; Merry, 2001;
Merry, Levitt, Rosen, & Yoon, (2010); Merry & Stern, 2005; Paris, 2011;
Silverstein, 1996).
There is much to be gained through the cross-fertilization of the fields. It
could produce a coherent approach to the study of legal framing, which
would foster the sharing of concepts, such as ‘‘legal consciousness’’ (Ewick &
Silbey, 1998) and ‘‘master frames’’ (Snow & Benford, 1988), both of which
GWENDOLYN LEACHMAN26
are helpful in understanding the law’s constitutive force in social movement
action. The purpose of this paper is help chart a productive pathway for
future research for socio-legal scholars and sociologists alike. I first integrate
findings from these literatures to create a new ideal typology of legal
framing, which distinguishes legal frames by their logical structure, ideo-
logical content, and remedy. I propose that future research use this typology
in determining how a movement’s internal culture and social environment
constrain the symbolic utility of particular legal frames and shape the
movement’s legal framing strategy (see Williams, 2004). This model draws
heavily from the social constructionist tradition in sociology, which concept-
ualizes social movements as networks of activists engaged in symbolic and
material struggles that target a variety of institutional authorities, and
examines how a movement’s legal framing strategy is constructed in various
social fields (Armstrong & Bernstein, 2008). I argue that incorporating the
social constructionist model into legal mobilization will generate theory on
how activists strike a balance between the competing external pressures
toward institutional reproduction and internal pressures toward institu-
tional transformation, and on the potential for activists to both imagine and
realistically pursue new legal possibilities.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Law and society scholarship has long examined how social movement
actors use legal language to further their political and cultural goals (see
Scheingold, 1975). Since McCann’s (1994) research on the pay equity
movement exposed a multitude of ways in which the law serves a move-
ment’s extra-legal goals, there has been an outpouring of research on the
effect of a movement’s framing its grievance as a legal harm. The primary
task in socio-legal social movement research, including that on legal
framing, is to understand how, and the extent to which, law comes to
constitute the underlying vocabulary, concepts, values, and meanings that
movement actors draw on in their quest for social change (McCann, 1994,
p. 7). Socio-legal scholars conceptualize law broadly as both a cultural
construct and a symbolic resource (see Hull, 2001, p. 19), and emphasize
that informal articulations of the law may be only minimally constrained
by official legal formulations (see Merry & Stern, 2005; Polletta, 2000;
Silverstein, 1996). Indeed, social movement actors often assert rights claims
that judges have explicitly rejected (McCann, 1994). Finally, socio-legal
scholars recognize that formal law may be only a secondary goal when
Legal Framing 27
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