Legalizing Community: Lawyers and Citizen Activism in Neighborhood Disputes

公民通过社区行动参与和抵制治理是当代城市政治的一个关键方面，通常通过基于社区的地方认同来表达。 社区团体经常通过邻里纠纷围绕这种身份组织起来，这些团体可以利用法律和律师来实现他们的目标。 虽然社区活动家的一些叙述中提到了法律策略，但很少有研究人员分析过群体如何制定法律使用策略，或者律师如何与这些群体互动，通过法律策略来表达他们基于地方的关切。 同样，很少有研究评估基于地方的争议的动态如何改变法律规则和程序，或者律师如何应对基于地方的激进主义的复杂性和丰富性。 该研究项目将研究针对在住宅环境中为无家可归者和精神病患者提供治疗的私人团体之家的邻里激进主义案例。 对多个司法管辖区选址纠纷的案例研究将允许分析在以不同方式管理此类纠纷的法律制度下针对集体之家的激进主义。 比较背景将允许评估不同的法律策略如何影响活动家和律师之间的互动。 通过访谈、档案研究和理论分析，调查人员将研究选址纠纷中基于地点的话语、该话语中蕴含的价值观以及这些话语与法律、律师和法律策略的交叉影响。 该项目将展示和描述当公民利用法律来解决社区问题时所发生的相互塑造。该项目将通过将法律和法律实践置于城市治理和社区话语的分析中，增加法律地理学和法律的学术研究。 它将描述法律专业人士不仅对法律问题的结果而且对客户话语的形式和内容的影响。 它将评估地方如何告知法律话语并嵌入法律话语中，以及如何构建和改变法律规则和实践以响应基于地方的关注。 该项目将帮助政策制定者、律师、社会服务提供者和社区团体努力调解土地使用冲突并实现争议较少的解决方案。 该项目对合法化和社区自我定义如何相互作用的描述将允许对规范选址纠纷的不同法律制度进行更全面的评估。 最后，该项目将协助法律教育工作者培训新律师，将社会和政治影响融入案件策略和实际判断中。

Citizen participation in and resistance to governance through community activism is a key aspect of contemporary urban politics, often expressed through neighborhood-based place identity. Community groups often organize around this identity through neighborhood disputes in which those groups may use law and lawyers to achieve their goals. While some accounts of community activists include references to legal tactics, few researchers have analyzed how groups strategize their use of the law or how lawyers interact with these groups in enacting their place-based concerns through legal strategy. Similarly, few studies have assessed how the dynamics of place-based disputing alter legal rules and processes or how lawyers respond to the complexity and richness of place-based activism. This research project will study cases of neighborhood activism against privately run group homes that provide treatment in residential settings to homeless and mentally ill individuals. Case studies of siting disputes in several jurisdictions will permit analysis of activism against group homes under legal regimes that regulate such disputes differently. The comparative context will permit assessment of how disparate legal strategies affect the interactions between activists and lawyers. Through interviews, archival research, and doctrinal analyses, the investigators will examine place-based discourse in siting disputes and the values embedded in that discourse as well as the cross-influence of those discourses with law, lawyers, and legal strategies. The project will demonstrate and delineate the mutual shaping that occurs when citizens engage the law to address community concerns.This project will add to the scholarship both of legal geography and of law by situating law and legal practice in analyses both of urban governance and of community discourse. It will describe the influence of legal professionals not only on the outcome of legal problems but also on the shape and content of client discourse. It will assess how place informs and is embedded in legal discourse and how legal rules and practices are structured and altered in response to place-based concerns. The project will aid policy-makers, lawyers, social service providers, and community groups in their efforts to mediate land-use conflicts and to realize less contentious resolutions. The project's delineation of how legalization and community self-definition interact will permit a fuller assessment of different legal regimes for regulating siting disputes. Finally, the project will assist legal educators in training new lawyers to integrate social and political influences into case strategy and practical judgment.