UCLA

This dissertation examines the institutional and interactional determinants of eviction case outcomes in the Los Angeles Superior Court (LASC) system. Tenants defending themselves against eviction encounter a classic sociological paradox: how the state tasks bureaucracies with managing eviction (allocating justice equitably) rarely resembles how they do so in practice (efficiently processing large volumes of cases). This contradiction expresses itself in a legal process that efficiently enforces landlords’ property claims at the expense of tenants’ due process rights. When tenants go to court alone, they often lose or settle on disadvantageous terms, but tenants represented by lawyers can hold the LASC system accountable to its commitments to equitably allocating substantive and procedural forms of justice. By counseling tenants in clinics, negotiating settlements, and trying cases, lawyers use their expertise to strategically link tenants’ interests in protecting their housing with courts’ pragmatic commitment to efficiently processing cases. In doing so, lawyers’ interventions help tenants find justice in a biased legal system and defend their homes in an uncompromising housing market.