Austin Sarat’s scientific contributions

... The sources of disputes are as important as the disputes themselves. Some sociological work on disputing and dispute processing takes as its starting point the dispute itself and its origins; it seeks to examine the source of disputes in a universe of grievances (Felstiner et al., 1981) and to discover why so many grievances are never articulated as disputes (Bumiller, 1987;Sarat, 1984). Grievances and disputes are accordingly subjective, unstable, complicated, incomplete, and constituted through dispute processing techniques. ...

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The “New Formalism” in Disputing and Dispute Processing

... In particular, injustice frames revolve around ''how the indignities of daily life are sometimes transformed into a shared grievance with a focused target of collective action'' (Gamson, 1992: 31). We are interested in whether and, if so, how PSOs cultivate injustice frames as they construct particular problems that directly impact prostitutes, assign blame to specific targets, and offer remedies (Felstiner et al., 1980Felstiner et al., –1981). Scholars argue that grievance formation is the most crucial step in this process (Felstiner et al., 1980Felstiner et al., – 1981). ...

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Organizations working on behalf of prostitutes: An analysis of goals, practices, and strategies

... The EEOC might funnel these charges toward several resolutions, including mediation, litigation brought by the EEOC, or provision of a "right to sue" letter to the charging party. The latter could result in a charging party choosing to "lump it" and not pursue their claim any further, or their following a branch toward litigation within the courts (Felstiner et al. 1980-81;Michelson 2007;Sandefur 2007). The EEOC's determination regarding a charge's merit serves to direct charges down varying dispute paths, legitimating some claims and extinguishing others. ...

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Enforcement agencies and an emerging category of law: examining EEOC processing of sexual orientation and gender identity charges

... Socio-legal scholarship, concerned with broader social disputing and legality, also recognizes the role of intermediate events in the perception and maturation of grievances into legal claims. Felstiner et al. (1980) emphasize that transformations define the dispute and its life cycle rather than the underlying issue. They state that "transformations between them (different stages) are caused by, and have consequences for, the parties, their attributions of responsibility, the scope of conflict, the mechanism chosen, the objectives sought, the Views online third-party CCB as motivated by vigilante and reparation schemas * A more elaborate summary, including articles that peripherally study third-party actions as part of the broader CCB phenomenon, is provided as Table A1 in the Web appendix. ...

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Consumers’ quest for justice: a multi-actor analysis of formal legal complaints