No-fault divorce legislation fundamentally changed the formal legal requirements for divorce from grounds based on moral concerns to those showing that the marriage has broken down without attributing blame. The old laws, which required that the plaintiff be blameless and prove malfeasance by the spouse, would have greatly restricted the number of divorces if they had not been widely subverted through collusion and perjury. The no-fault legislation gives an opportunity to test whether the attempts to legislate morality had any impact on divorce rates. Many reformers and researchers have claimed that the fault provisions were so thoroughly subverted that their removal did not lead to more divorces. The present study explores the impact of no-fault laws in thirty-eight states by applying a time-series-cross-sectional design. When grouped into one variable the laws did increase divorces, but when individual laws are analyzed, only a minority, primarily in eastern states, evidence significant impacts. Finally, I argue that it is probably beyond the limits of feasible social science research to determine why some laws had impacts but others did not.

Three major child support guideline models are currently used in the United States to stimulate adequate levels of child support. To evaluate the effects of these guidelines, we examined cases filed before and after their introduction in three states that enacted different models. Overall, we found a modest increase in child support awards and few differences across models. The most substantial increases occurred in low-income cases in settings in which awards had historically been low. Guidelines also appeared to decrease the likelihood of a zero dollar award in cases that had previously lacked orders: those in which the father was unemployed and in which the obligor was female.

Post-guideline order levels in low-income families still fall short of the best available estimates of expenditures on children in intact households; they match expenditures in intact households in middle-and upper-income families. We consider several factors that may explain the limitations as well as the successes of guidelines in stimulating change.

Legal control of aggressive acts within the family must be assessed against a background of other familial controls. This study identifies factors that control male aggression against female partners in intimate relationships. Hirschi's (1969) theory of the social bond, applied almost exclusively to delinquency, is used to test the importance of attachments, commitments, involvement, and beliefs in controlling husband-to-wife assault. By looking at males who do not assault their partners, we gain some insight into the ways in which legal policies might be structured to reduce domestic violence against women.

Serious criticisms have been raised about divorce mediators' claim that they act as purely neutral facilitators of party-driven agreements. This paper reports on a study, based on tape recordings of mediation in the United Kingdom, intended to describe the strategies used by mediators and clients in the attempt to resolve disputes. It identifies a technique, labeled “selective facilitation,” through which clients may be steered in particular directions chosen by the mediator. This poses important questions for future evaluation studies and for the regulation of mediation practice.

Strands of scholarly writing on corporate bankruptcy are scattered across the fields of economics, jurisprudence, political science, and policy analysis. These varied perspectives tend to share common weaknesses that point directly to adding a sociological voice to the debate. An analytic framework that emphasizes power, interorganizational ties, and the embeddedness of organizational action in a larger social structure yields new insights into “strategic bankruptcies,” such as the Chapter 11 filing of the Manville Corporation. In turn, this perspective leads to a questioning of some of the basic assumptions concerning the role and operation of bankruptcy law.

This paper reappraises the value of situational and attitudinal variables as parts of a theory of police behavior. That situational factors affect officers' decisions to make arrests is well supported by empirical evidence; that officers' behavior is shaped by their attitudes and values is a common assumption even though it is supported only by weak empirical evidence. This analysis indicates that the theoretical utility of situational variables is limited for the most part to the arrest decision: Situational factors have modest effects on officers' choices among informal actions. Furthermore, the analysis shows that attitudinal variables fail to account for more than a very small part of the variation in behavior. A theoretical perspective on police behavior as administrative decisionmaking is consistent with these findings, and might redirect future research along more fruitful lines.