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This paper examines questions about contract enforcement in the absence of formal legal institutions, using archival evidence for one particular rural society in pre-emancipation Russia. The evidence presented indicates that enforcement services provided by the local landlord made it possible for Russians from different socioeconomic and legal strata (soslovii) to engage in a wide variety of co...

Processes that are related to the identification and the authentication of persons and other legal entities have been necessarily existing and functioning for a while in public administration and business. Information Society offers new e-services for citizens and businesses, which dramatically change the administration and results in additional challenges, risks and opportunities. Citizen’s co...

The determination of prices is a key function of markets yet it is just beginning to be studied by sociologists. Most theories view prices as a consequence of economic processes. By contrast, we consider how social structure shapes prices. Building on embeddedness arguments and original fieldwork at large law firms, we propose that a firm’s embedded relationships influence prices by prompting p...

Background Unsafe abortion remains a public health problem in Ghana with colossal costs to families, communities and health services, evident in persistently high maternal mortality ratios. It is well known that access to and utilization of family planning, safe and legal abortion services and quality post abortion care could help curtail the ramifications of unsafe abortions. Ghana has a liber...

This essay explores how policymakers and other public-interested actors have empirically calculated the benefits of providing low-income access to legal services in the past, and how they might improve upon existing methods going forward. The author reviews, criticizes, and tries to build on two major civil justice needs studies, one published by the Legal Services Corporation in 2005 and the o...

BACKGROUND Despite the change in legal status of abortion in South Africa in 1996, barriers to access remain. Stigma associated with abortion provision and care, privacy concerns, and negative provider attitudes often discourage women from seeking legal abortion services and sometimes force women outside of the legal system. What happens when women present for abortion at a designated abortion ...