Matthew Clair is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and, by courtesy, the Law School. His scholarship broadly examines how cultural meanings and interactions reflect, reproduce, and challenge various dimensions of social inequality and state violence. His research to date has focused on courts and the legal profession. The former body of work leverages the case of courts to sharpen theoretical understandings of the state, institutional inequality, and envisioning among marginalized groups, whereas the latter body of work leverages the case of the legal profession to explore how workplaces and occupational cultures are shaped by the social crises of the twenty-first century.
His award-winning book Privilege and Punishment: How Race and Class Matter in Criminal Court shows how race and class inequalities in the criminal legal system are embedded in and reproduced through the attorney-client relationship. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic and interview data, his book shows how lawyers and judges often silence, coerce, and punish disadvantaged defendants who attempt to advocate for themselves in court but reward privileged defendants who trust in and defer to their lawyers’ legal expertise. These dynamics reveal a paradox of legal control: striving to exercise one’s legal rights often backfires for the poor and people of color.
Matt’s research has been published in several peer-reviewed journals and has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the RDCJN/Arnold Foundation, the American Society of Criminology, the Center for American Political Studies, and the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management. He has received awards from the American Sociological Association, the American Society of Criminology, the Law & Society Association, and the Society for the Study of Social Problems. His research has contributed to policy interventions and reports, and he has written essays for various public-facing outlets, including The Nation, Public Books, and Boston Review. A committed mentor and teacher, Matt received the 2022 Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching, Stanford University’s highest teaching award.