Abstract
This Article illustrates, through sociolinguistic analysis, how an adjudicator’s biases against certain narrative styles can influence his or her assessments of credibility, treatment of parties, and decision-making in the administrative law setting. Poverty lawyers have long observed that many claimants in the administrative state continue to face procedural and discursive obstacles. Applying insights from a growing field of inter-disciplinary research, including conversation analysis, linguistics, and cognitive studies, this Article builds upon those observations by more precisely exploring through a case study of an unemployment insurance benefits hearing how structural and narrative biases can work to deny an applicant due process and exacerbate unequal power dynamics.
Repository Citation
Jason A. Cade,
Narrative Preferences and Administrative Due Process
, 14 Harv. Latino L. Rev. 155
(2011),
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/fac_artchop/902
Originally Uploaded at SSRN.