CSLS Speaker Series – “Equality Wars: How Social and Behavioral Science Shaped Employment Discrimination Law”

Featuring Robin Stryker, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Purdue University

This talk derives from an in-process book that tells the story of how the social and behavioral sciences (SBS) including economics, sociology, psychology, and statistics, helped shape judicial interpretation and enforcement of federal employment discrimination law from its advent to the present in the United States. The social and behavioral sciences are important resources for law making and enforcement. The book answers the following questions: When we find the social and behavioral sciences in US federal employment discrimination litigation, what roles do these sciences play? What factors determine whether social scientific ideas, methods, research studies, and findings succeed in shaping judicial doctrine through which employment discrimination legislation is enforced? What consequences stem from this selection process?

I show how Monahan and Walker’s three roles for science—as social fact, social authority, and social framework – in litigation in common law systems play out in US employment discrimination law. I provide a politics of science framework for understanding and explaining the patterns of judicial reliance and non-reliance on SBS in that law. Providing evidence based on theoretically strategic analytic comparisons across different areas of Title VII doctrine, including but not restricted to disparate impact and gender-pay equity/comparable worth, I argue that those uses of SBS in employment discrimination law most likely to increase economic and social equality are also those most likely to be selected out of court interpretation and enforcement of federal employment discrimination law.

Cosponsored with the Center for Law and Work

Reception: Lunch 12:15-12:45p.m. in the Kadish Library 
Program: 12:45-2:00p.m. in the Philip Selznick Seminar Room

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If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) to fully participate in this event, please contact csls@law.berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.