Coercion to compromise : plea bargaining, the courts and the making of political authority / Mary E. Vogel.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 369-403) and index.

1 Plea Bargaining: A Distinctively American Practice 3 -- The Paradox of Plea Bargaining 5 -- Beginnings in Partisan Contest and Political Stabilization 7 -- Origins of Plea Bargaining: Controversial Beginnings 8 -- Constitutive Structural Change and Human Agency 15 -- Law as "Modality of Rule": The Making of Political Authority 16 -- Formation of a Limited State of Courts and Parties 20 -- State before Nation: Articulating a Relational Political Identity 24 -- Forging Citizens in the Context of an Extended Franchise 25 -- Comparatively Informed Historical Analysis 28 -- 2 Liberty and the Republican Citizen: Rise of the Rule of Law 37 -- Republicanism in the Historical Imagination 38 -- Contours of Republican Ideology 41 -- Citizenship in the Republic 45 -- Republicanism in the Language of Labor 45 -- "Popular Sovereignty" and the "Rule of Law" 48 -- The Rise of Liberalism 49 -- 3 Law, Social Order, and the State in Social Theory 53 -- Law and Political Power: A Macrosocial Approach 53 -- Law and the Nature, Capacities, and Limits of the State 55 -- Law and Social Order in Historical Sociology 56 -- The Autonomy of the State and Popular Consent 60 -- Law and State Formation: Challenge to "Liberal Myth" 62 -- Early Sociological Perspectives on Law: Weber and Marx 65 -- Statist, Conflict, and Contingent Theoretical Traditions of the State Governance and Law 70 -- Specific Existing Theories about State and Law in Society 77 -- Continuity and Change: A Generative Sociology 89 -- 4 Contours of Early Plea Bargaining: Patterns of Plea and Concessions 91 -- The Emergence of Plea Bargaining 93 -- Popularization of Guilty Pleas 94 -- Multiplicity of the Forms of Concessions 102 -- Concessions in the Magnitude of Sentences 103 -- Type of Sentence Imposed 112 -- Chances of Acquittal 118 -- Other Concessions 119 -- Composite Analysis of the Building Blocks of Bargaining 119 -- Does Caseload Pressure Play a Part? 121 -- Pleas and Concessions: The Institutionalization Process 125 -- Responses to Marx and Weber: Hypothetical Explanations 126 -- 5 Episodic Leniency in Britain and America 131 -- Social Conflict and Popular Rule: Recrafting Leniency 132 -- The Cultural Repertoire of Leniency in the Common Law 133 -- Religious Practice of Admonition: A Cultural Template 140 -- Stirrings of Direct Compromise in the Civil Sphere 143 -- Occasional Cases of Direct Compromise in Criminal Courts 143 -- 6 The Emergence of Plea Bargaining: Improvization in Law 147 -- Timing of Crisis: Convergence of Forces and Innovation 148 -- Changing Class Structure and Challenge to Elite Control 150 -- Extension of the Franchise and Movements for Social Reform 163 -- Law and Social Policy in Sentencing 169 -- Lawyering in an Era of Popular Politics 171 -- Popular Challenge to the Common Law 174 -- Contours of the State 178 -- The Micropolitics of Consent 183 -- Plea Bargaining and Popular Consent 187 -- 7 Reconsolidating Political Power in an Age of Popular Politics: Whig Reform and Social Reproduction 189 -- Second Great Awakening and Ideological Transition 191 -- Market Revolution and Fears of Disorder 198 -- Market Culture and Victorian Reconstruction of Punishment 202 -- Reconsolidation of Elite Power and the Whig Ascendancy 207 -- Sequencing and Convergence of Causal Forces 217 -- Political Stabilization and Consent: Reform and Reproduction 220 -- "Courts and Parties": A Weak Administrative State 222 -- Bench, Bar, and the Legacy of Post-Revolutionary Federalism 225 -- Courts and Policy: Control through Traditional Hierarchies 234 -- Social Class and the Elections of 1836: Collapse of the Anti-Masonic Party 237 -- Popular Skepticism: A Language of Protest 239 -- Recrafting the Tradition of Episodic Leniency 241 -- Transformation of Community and Ambivalent Deference 244 -- 8 The Transformation of Plea Bargaining: Control through Middle Level Institutions and Social Welfare 247 -- Social Class and Ethnicity as Bases of Conflict 250 -- An Incongruous Democratic Alliance: Pragmatic Patricians and the Irish Working Class 251 -- The Faces of Ethnic Status Conflict: Struggle between City and State 253 -- Stewards of the Transfer of Power: Politics of the Yankee-Irish Democratic Alliance 255 -- Eclipse of Yankee Leadership: From Municipal Socialism to Progressive Reform 261 -- Coalition Building and the Rise of Patronage Politics 266 -- Ethnic Politics and the Socializing Role of Middle-Level Institutions 268 -- The Courts, Sentencing Policy, and the Mayoral Elections 269 -- Changing Patterns of Concessions and Their Social Incidence 270 -- The Struggle for Control of Socializing Institutions 280 -- 9 The Making of Post-Revolutionary Political Authority 285 -- Reestablishing Authority: A "Rule of Law" 287 -- Role of the Judiciary: Implementation of "Law Rule" 288 -- Forms of Authority: Rational-Legal and Traditional 289 -- Political Equality and Material Inequality: Threat to Property 291 -- "Americanization" and Homogeneity: Imbuing Industry 293 -- Immigrant Diversity and Social Disorder 296 -- Faction and Disaffiliation: Marginals and the Workingmen's Movement 297 -- Theorizing State Power: Authority, Legitimation, and Consent 298 -- The Making of Democratic Political Authority 299 -- "Symbolic Suretyship": Socially Embedded Free Choice 301 -- Hierarchy Resurgent: Home, Workplace, and Social Control 303 -- Post-Revolutionary Authority: Modern and Traditional Elements 304 -- Freedom and the Web of Membership: Facets of Citizenship 305 -- Markets and Hierarchies: Liberty, Political Subject, and Citizenship 307 -- Nonresidential Laborers and Community Jurisdiction 309 -- Property in the Work of Laborers 312 -- Contractarian Individualism and Republicanism: Autonomous Subjects 314 -- Dualistic Liberty: Formally Free Labor and Constrained Choice 315 -- Similarities between Laborers and Criminal Defendants 317 -- State before Nation: Ethnic Pluralism and National Identity 318 -- Citizenship as Modern Status Contract 319 -- Mixed Model of Citizenship: Civic Corporatism 320 -- Democratic Skepticism and the Oppositional Discourse of Liberalism 321 -- Authority and Hegemony 322.

Examining the origins of the controversial practice of plea bargaining, this study shows the procedure to have emerged early in the American Republic. Vogel argues that it arose in the 1830s as part of a process of political stabilisation.