Trustworthiness and Jurisdiction in the Stanford Financial Group Fraud
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Trustworthiness and Jurisdiction in the Stanford Financial Group Fraud by Camilo Arturo Leslie A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Sociology) in the University of Michigan 2015 Doctoral Committee: Professor Margaret R. Somers, Co-Chair Professor George P. Steinmetz, Co-Chair Professor Donald J. Herzog Associate Professor Greta R. Krippner Associate Professor Geneviève Zubrzycki © Camilo Arturo Leslie 2015 DEDICATION I dedicate this dissertation to the memory of my father, Camilo Antonio Leslie, and to the love, good humor, and perseverance of my mother, Lourdes Leslie. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This grueling, absurd, intermittently wonderful journey began a very long time ago, and I’ve racked up a list of debts appropriate to its duration. I arrived in Ann Arbor in the early 2000s without a plan or a clue, and promptly enrolled in a social theory course co-taught by George Steinmetz and Webb Keane. Both professors, and several graduate students enrolled in that course (Mucahit Bilici, Hiroe Saruya, John Thiels), were more welcoming than I had any right to expect, and my application to the sociology program the following year was largely in response to their generosity of spirit. Before long, I was enrolled as both a 1L at the University of Michigan Law School and as a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology. For their many forms of support and indispensable friendship during these trying first few years, I wish to thank the entire Horwitz family (Beth, Jeremy, Larry, and Tobi); Marco Rigau and Alexandra Carbone; and Ryan Calo and Jean Brownell. Thanks too to Michael Steinberg and Sarah Zearfoss for making my transition into law school a pleasant one. In sociology, I’ve enjoyed the intellectual camaraderie and, more important, the friendship of a great many fellow graduate students. Two groups were especially central to my experience: “the fellowship” (Mariana Craciun, Maria Farkas, Salik Farooqi, and Atef Said) and the participants in Peggy Somers’ short-lived but wonderful “law and society salon” (Avi Astor, Alex Gerber, Chris Roberts, Sadia Saeed, and Atef Said). For making graduate school an infinitely more vibrant, warm, and funny place, I thank not only the foregoing but also Mucahit iii Bilici, Jay Borchert, Jose Bortolucci, Emily Bosk, Helena Buhr, Barış Büyükokutan, Patricia Chen, Andy Clarno, Danielle Czarnecki, Claire Decoteau, Matt Desan, Meagan Elliott, David Flores, Melissa Forbes, Marco Garrido, Alice Gates, Chris Gauthier, Fiona Greenland, Kim Greenwell, Saida Grundy, Dan Hirschman, David Hutson, Ya-Wen Lei, Yan Long, Besnik Pula, Sadia Saeed, Hiro Saito, Hiroe Saruya, Ethan Schoolman, Jamie Small, Flannery Stevens, and Elizabeth Young. I owe a dauntingly large debt to the members of my dissertation committee. My co- chairs, Peggy Somers and George Steinmetz, have been with me since years before I hatched my dissertation topic, and, in that long span, they’ve been unstintingly supportive of my intellectual interests, allowing me to follow my own path without topical or theoretical impositions. At the same time, they have pushed me to temper my creative impulses with conceptual rigor, and have taught me, sometimes against my own worst instincts, a deep respect for the discipline. They are exemplars of both intellectual and personal generosity and I’m deeply grateful for their guidance over the years. I first met Don Herzog, my committee’s cognate member, as a student in the first-year Torts class he taught at Michigan Law, and got to know him much better, two years later, as a student in his “Liberalism and its Critics” seminar. Don’s eclectic brilliance, arch wit, and generosity are legendary. I recently wrote to Don that a complimentary email from him is worth printing and framing. If there’s hyperbole there, it’s only in trace amounts: among the achievements I’m most proud of, during my time at Michigan, is the fact that I was able to make a positive impression on him. Certainly, among the best decisions I ever made as a graduate student was to ask Greta Krippner to serve on my dissertation committee. Greta’s brilliance and insight are second to none iv and yet, somehow, they are matched by her decency and good humor. I could not have asked for a better, more expert guide as I made my first bumbling forays into the wilds of economic sociology. That I have achieved any level of fluency in that idiom is a testament to her generosity and her always trenchant feedback. I met Genevieve Zubryzicki when I took her fantastic Nationalism seminar, many years back. It was a crucial experience, not only because it was there that I wrote a first draft of the dreaded, and only recently vanquished “maps paper,” but because I learned from her that it’s possible to be a virtuosic specialist and incisive generalist simultaneously. I’ve met with Genevieve many times in the years since and have always left our conversations feeling that I understood much better where I was and what needed doing. For that I thank her. In my time at Michigan, I’ve benefitted from the generosity and wisdom of many other professors, including Elizabeth Armstrong, Sarah Burgard, Rob Jansen, Webb Keane, Michael Kennedy, Howard Kimeldorf, Sandra Levitsky, Mark Mizruchi, Jeff Morenoff, and Jason Owen- Smith. Though I had no legitimate claim on their time, they offered it up freely. Their sage advice and timely words of encouragement shaped my time at Michigan more than I can say. Finally, I could not have survived, much less excelled, at Michigan without the assistance and patience of many administrators and support staff. In particular I want to thank Jack Atkinson, Thea Bude, Vicky Horvath, Doug Keasal, Pat Preston, Mary Ramirez, Rick Smoke, Kerry Sprague, Jeannie Worrall, and Sarah Zearfoss. During my graduate school career, I was fortunate to secure a fair amount of both internal and external funding that allowed me to devise, conduct, and synthesize my dissertation research. I thank the Ford Foundation, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Rackham Graduate School, Michigan’s Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER), the Law v and Society Association (LSA), and, with particular warmth and gratitude, the American Bar Foundation (ABF). In 2011, I was awarded a LSA/ABF/NSF Law and Social Science Dissertation and Mentoring Fellowship, which allowed me to relocate to Chicago and join the incredible intellectual community at the ABF. I cannot imagine a more convivial setting in which to have researched and written up my dissertation. I owe a huge debt to Bob Nelson and Laura Beth Nielsen for not only welcoming me to the ABF, and making my formal tenure there a thoroughly enjoyable one, but for allowing me to stay on for two additional years after it ended, providing me with office space, computing, and much needed interpersonal and intellectual continuity. Thank you! Many others at the ABF helped make my time in Chicago a successful and pleasant one. I was very fortunate to have been assigned Terry Halliday as my formal ABF mentor. Our conversations, during our many coffee and lunch dates, were both grounding and inspiring. I also received extensive, invaluable mentoring from Susan Shapiro, a luminary in the field of trust scholarship. Her open door policy and wry sense of humor were highlights of my time at the ABF. I am thankful too to have had a stimulating conversation about my research with Bonnie Honig prior to her departure to Brown. In my final year at the ABF, I was given two wonderful opportunities. First, I was asked to co-chair the ABF’s year-long Seminar Series. Second, I was invited to serve as an associate editor on Law & Social Inquiry. For those enriching experiences, I thank Bob Nelson (and Traci Burch) and Chris Schmidt (and my fellow editors), respectively. Among ABF faculty and staff, I enjoyed the intellectual support and friendship of not only Terry and Susan, but also Carol Heimer, Beth Mertz, Gabriele Plickert, Jothie Rajah, and Wencia Smithen. Thank you all for the countless delicious meals, several thousand pounds of vi chocolate, conspiratorial and darkly funny conversations, and timely words of encouragement. In addition, my stay at the ABF was made much, much smoother by the logistical help and problem solving of Roz Caldwell, Stephen Daniels, Amanda Ehrhardt, Katharine Hannaford, Tessie Harrell, Edgar Tuazon, Lucinda Underwood, and Erin Watt. Finally, I was lucky to have met and befriended a number of brilliant colleagues among ABF- and Northwestern-affiliated students and faculty. I thank Anya Degenshein, Kasey Henricks, Josh Kaiser, Jaimie Morse, Amy Myrick, Shaun Ossei-Owusu, Rob Owen, Margarita Rayzberg, Karen Rhone, Meredith Rountree, Rashmee Singh, Kim Welch, Jill Weinberg, and Jennifer Woodward. While in Chicago I benefitted from several formative conversations with area scholars. In particular, I wish to thank Bruce Carruthers and Justin Richland. Their observations on trust and jurisdiction, respectively, were important to the development of my ideas. Also, my time in Chicago would have been much less enjoyable but for the presence of a number of Michigan Sociology “expats”: Andy Clarno, Claire Decoteau, Marco Garrido, Fiona Greenland, and Atef Said. Many of them—as well as Northwestern scholars Mariana Craciun, Paul Ramirez, and Daniel Stoltz—deserve additional thanks for the comments and encouragement they provided regarding works in progress, in the various writing groups I was part of while here. Naturally, I incurred some of my deepest debts while conducting fieldwork. The Venezuela-based leg of this journey would have been inconceivable without the aid of Alex Dalmady. He helped in countless ways to get me situated in Caracas and his generosity set off a cascade of kind acts by many others that made my research, and daily life there, possible.