Making Way: Legal Mobilization, Organizational Response, and Wheelchair Access

Law & Society Review, Volume 46, Number 1 (2012)

32 Pages Posted: 28 Jan 2015

See all articles by Jeb Barnes

Jeb Barnes

University of Southern California - Department of Political Science

Thomas F. Burke

Wellesley College, Political Science Department

Date Written: January 26, 2015

Abstract

Questions of how and why organizations respond to legal rights are analyzed in several sociolegal research traditions, including studies of legal mobilization, regulation, and neo-institutionalist accounts of the diffusion of organizational structures. Using original qualitative and quantitative data, this article examines the responses of ten organizations to wheelchair access rights that are found in various provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and related state laws. We find that concepts from each of the research traditions are useful in understanding the sources of variance in response among the organizations in our sample. We focus on four key variables: legal mobilization, commitment, professionalization, and routinization. We contend that these variables offer a relatively parsimonious language for studying organizational responses to the law and for aggregating insights from competing approaches in the literature, both of which are essential to advancing our understanding of the conditions under which law changes society.

Keywords: organizations, disability, rights, neo-institutionalism

Suggested Citation

Barnes, Jeb and Burke, Thomas F., Making Way: Legal Mobilization, Organizational Response, and Wheelchair Access (January 26, 2015). Law & Society Review, Volume 46, Number 1 (2012), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2555965

Jeb Barnes

University of Southern California - Department of Political Science ( email )

2250 Alcazar Street
Los Angeles, CA 90089
United States

Thomas F. Burke (Contact Author)

Wellesley College, Political Science Department ( email )

106 Central St.
Wellesley, MA 02181
United States

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