Legalizing Community: Lawyers and Citizen Activism in Neighborhood Disputes

公民通过社区行动主义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来围绕这一身份组织起来，这些团体可能会利用法律和律师来实现他们的目标。虽然一些关于社区活动家的报道提到了法律策略，但很少有研究人员分析群体如何制定他们使用法律的策略，或者律师如何通过法律策略与这些群体互动，以实现他们基于地方的关注。同样，很少有研究评估基于地的纠纷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的行动主义的复杂性和丰富性。这个研究项目将研究社区行动主义反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经营的集体之家的案例。对几个司法管辖区的选址争议案例进行研究，可以分析在不同法律制度下针对集体之家的行动主义，这些法律制度对此类争议的管理方式不同。比较的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争议中的基于地点的话语，以及该话语中嵌入的价值观，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参与法律解决社区问题时发生的相互影响。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，从而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的影响，不仅对法律问题的结果，而且对客户话语的形状和内容。它将评估地方如何为法律话语提供信息并融入其中，以及法律规则和做法如何根据基于地方的关切而构建和改变。该项目将帮助决策者、律师、社会服务提供者和社区团体调解土地使用冲突，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，将允许对规范选址争议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，将社会和政治影响纳入案件策略和实际判断。

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.