Rights & Discipline: Competing Modes of Social Control in the Fight over Employee Drug Testing

Conflicts over employee drug testing programs involve competing claims about the appropriate organization of social control policy. These disputes are related to the coexistence of competing discourses of social control: (1) a juridical discourse of crime and punishment, which emphasizes citizen rights that limit state surveillance, and (2) a disciplinary orientation that strives to prevent and eliminate crime through sustained surveillance and control. The author reviews recent Supreme Court drug testing decisions and argues that the Court adopts the second perspective and supports social control techniques that are antithetical to key elements of liberal legal ideology.