Joanna L. Grossman, The Culture of Compliance: The Final Triumph of Form Over Substance in Sexual Harassment Law

Joanna L. Grossman, The Culture of Compliance: The Final Triumph of Form Over Substance in Sexual Harassment Law

“Why does sexual harassment persist despite nearly three decades of attempts to eliminate it? While courts have developed a comprehensive set of legal rules governing workplace harassment, the incidence of harassment has not changed. That is true, in part, because the rules of employer liability for harassment are calculated to ensure that employers adopt basic policies and procedures with respect to workplace harassment, not, surprisingly, to ensure that they actually prevent it. In both legal and extralegal discourse little or no attempt has been made to connect the legal regime to the actual problem of harassment. This Article remedies this inattention by reevaluating legal regime in light of an emerging body of social science literature addressing the causes of harassment, the effectiveness of various preventative measures, and the substantive and procedural adequacy of internal grievance procedures.”