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African Law and Society Biotechnology, Bioethics and the Law
Cause LawyeringCritical Research on Race and the Law
The Cultural Lives of Capital Punishment
Culture, Society, and Intellectual Property
Integrating Gender into Legal Education Law and Counter-Hegemonic Globalization
Law and Public-Private Dichotomy
Law and Society in Latin America
Lay Participation in Legal Systems
Legal Complex and Struggles for Political Liberalism
Negotiation and Conflict Resolution
Realist and Empirical Legal Methods Collaborative Research Networks (CRNs) were originally developed, with the assistance of a grant from the National Science Foundation, at the 2000 Annual Meeting in Miami to facilitate international research collaboration in selected topics for presentation at the meeting in Budapest in July 2001.
After those meetings, some CRNs decided to continue and build on their success by expanding their network of scholars, maintaining electronic communication within the group, and organizing sessions regularly for the Annual Meetings. Also, interest in this form of collaboration expanded beyond the first efforts and requests for new CRNs to increase the areas of research covered were received by the Association.
Consequently, a coordinator was appointed by the LSA President to coordinate existing CRNs and accept proposals for new ones. Anyone interested in developing a CRN on a new topic or who has a general question about CRNs should contact the CRN Coordinator, David Engel (University at Buffalo, State University of New York, USA).
Expression of Interest in a Particular CRN:
If you wish to participate actively in one of the CRNs you should identify yourself by sending an email to organizer (simply click on the organizer's name to email these recipients simultaneously). In the email message describe your research interest and how it might fit in the subject of the CRN.
(click on organizer's name to send an email)
The Collaborative Research Network on Constitutional Ethnography will focus on a set of theoretical and empirical issues related to the establishment, maintenance, transformation and collapse of constitutional regimes. The last two decades have seen the evolution of many military dictatorships and soviet-style regimes (particularly in Latin America and Eastern Europe) into constitutional-democratic ones. That same period has also seen the creation of a "constitution of Europe" through the ever-closer union of European nations as well as the strengthening of other regional associations, at the same time that there has been constitutional devolution within a number of diverse countries like Spain, Britain, Brazil and Russia. Constitutional revolutions have overtaken established constitutional regimes like Britain (abolition of the role of the heredity peers, the proposed introduction of a bill of rights, the new parliaments), Canada (creation of a charter of rights), and the United States (federalism strikes back). At the same time as these country-specific changes are occurring, international law has been playing a larger role in the domestic law of many constitutional democracies than it used to as new international bodies take over responsibilities that were once the sole province of sovereignty (e.g. the international criminal court, monetary linkages, the policy contingencies of IMF loans). Through constitutional borrowing from one system to another and through the harmonizing effects of international law, constitutional regimes are becoming more like each other even as they are in other ways becoming more distinctive. The landscape of constitutionalism is quickly changing - and yet there is still the sense that constitutions provide a way to bring stability to politics. Constitutionalism is a field full of paradoxes.Organizer: Kim Scheppele, Princeton University, USA
Appropriate constitutional subject matter includes not only the
obvious one of constitutional clauses (or equivalents) and their
meanings. Some subjects that are profoundly about the
organization of the state or about the relationship between the state
and the individual (the legal regulation of the state, mechanisms of
elections, constitution of an official currency, the protection of
human rights, the creation of citizenship, the extension of law to
politics) are constitutional subjects even if not all constitutional
texts include them. "Constitutional ethnography"
is meant to include a broad range of specific subjects. If this
description has captivated you, please propose something!
Issues of citizenship and immigration are critical to understanding ways that individuals and groups are created and marginalized. Within this collaborative research network, “citizenship,” is defined broadly, to include legal status, membership rights, civic involvement, social participation, and linkages to structures that delimit, transcend, and/or deconstruct the nation-state. It is also important to understand the discourses and practices that implicitly or explicitly define citizenship in particular contexts. Thus, race, gender, national origin, religion, ethnicity, social class and other markers of membership or exclusion may subtly or violently shape the claiming or attribution of citizenship in practice. Moreover, globalizing and transnational processes may reshape both citizenship and exclusion, positioning individuals and groups within and outside of multiple legal orders. Immigration is clearly one such process, and, given the war on terrorism and the restructuring of immigration in the United States and the sharpening of inequality internationally, it is crucial to examine how movements, non-movements, rights, and statuses are being distributed by nation-states and, sometimes, other entities.Organizers: Leila Kawar, New York University, USA, Elizabeth Boyle, University of Minnesota, USA, and Jeff Handmaker, Institute of Social Studies, THE NETHERLANDS
Cause lawyers challenge mainstream representations of professionalism by taking sides in political and social conflicts. In so doing, cause lawyers become advocates not only, or primarily, for their clients but for causes with which the clients? cases are associated--and with which the lawyer identifies. Research possibilities include but are not limited to examinations of the activities of cause lawyers, the role of cause lawyers in divided societies, the connections of cause lawyers to social movements, the impact of their work on state processes, and transnational networks. Beginning in the mid-1990s, the Cause Lawyering Project has organized international and interdisciplinary research teams that have produced two edited volumes. The collaborative research network is an opportunity to extend the geographic and cultural reach of the cause lawyering project; to generate new research, advance theorization of cause lawyering, test existing propositions and uncover new ones--all from a broader base than the current project.Organizers: Austin Sarat, Amherst College, and Stuart Scheingold, University of Washington, USA
4. Lay Participation in Legal Systems
Organizers: Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovich, Michigan State University, Valerie Hans, Cornell University, and Mary Rose, University of Texas
The purpose of this CRN is to bring together scholars working on different forms of lay participation in legal decision making. The legal systems of many countries incorporate laypersons in some decision-making capacity, including lay judges or assessors, mixed tribunals of law-trained and lay judges, and the jury.
Lay participation in the justice system has been justified on multiple grounds. It is said to improve decision making, to reduce the impact of biased or corrupt judges, to keep the system responsive to changing community values, to better represent the diversity of citizen experiences and perspectives, and to enhance the legitimacy of the system. Lay involvement is strongly criticized on multiple grounds as well, including charges that lay participants are incompetent or biased decision makers, lack crucial knowledge of law, or ignore the law. Scholars have also questioned whether lay participation has any real impact on legal system outcomes or whether it is serves only a legitimacy function.
This CRN will help facilitate the exchange of research findings and comparative research about lay involvement in legal decision making. What are the strengths and drawbacks of different forms of lay participation as practiced in different countries? How do a country's historical and contextual factors shape the forms of lay participation? To what extent does lay participation fulfill its multiple functions?
5. Regulatory Governance
The CRN on Regulatory Governance focuses on the study of regulatory instruments, institutions, and actors. The network is concerned with how law interacts with economic activity and with the challenges that emerging social trends, such as privatization and globalization, pose for regulatory and administrative institutions. It examines how traditional as well as emerging regulatory instruments operate in theory and in practice, including approaches such as self-regulation, covenants, management systems, and market-based regulation. It also explores the behavior, culture, and design of regulatory institutions and actors, with particular attention to the varied demands of accountability, rationality, and legitimacy. The network connects researchers focusing on regulation in domestic and international settings and across a variety of regulatory domains. To sign-up for the Regulatory Governance CRN listserv, send a subscribe message to the reggov list here.Organizers: Cary Coglianese, University of Pennsylvania, USA
6. Public Opinion and the Courts
Organizers: Cheri Wilson, Independent Scholar, and Kristina Galstyan, Yerevan State University and the European Regional Academy in the Caucasus
This CRN is aimed at studying public opinion of justice systems in different countries, legal traditions, different regimes and in historical context. It also tackles how society influences on legal practice and law and how legal practice influences on the society. It examines the public opinion of courts, the people's credibility in judges, prosecutors as an ingredient of democracy and rule of law. It has a strong comparative angle: different countries and different regions face very different as well as very similar problems and ways of addressing these. Activities aimed at raising the public trust in courts are often part of law reform projects. Therefore the CRN addresses the issues of rule of law reforms in a comparative light and attempts to give recommendations.
8. Labor Rights
Organizer: Frank Munger, New York Law School, and Ellen Dannin, Pennsylvania State University Dickinson School of Law
In a global economy, there is a need for new approaches to the age-old challenge of protecting workers' rights and improving labor standards. Globalization affects the nature of work and the character of the employment relationship around the world. Pressures on firms to improve competitiveness through restructuring workforces and production across national borders have led to increased challenges for nation-states. States in the North look for ways to preserve existing levels of employment and income support while those in the South struggle to simultaneously promote growth and investment and raise labor standards. To these ends, national laws may need to be revised, international norms developed, and transnational advocacy explored.
This network seeks to encourage research by sociolegal scholars on these issues and bring sociolegal scholars and experts on industrial relations together. We hope to foster work along two intersecting dimensions. First, what is the impact of changes in firms, production processes and global market forces on work, workforces, and worker's rights and conditions in the North and South? Second, how do existing legal institutions function and what kinds of new governance mechanisms are needed? We hope to explore the role of states, courts, unions, NGO's, existing international institutions such as the ILO, 'social clauses' in trade agreements, the World Bank and other IFI's, as well as industries and private firms through codes of conduct and otherwise.
9. Integrating Gender into Legal Education
Organizers: Ann Shalleck and Daniela Kraiem, American University, USA
Organizers: Tanina Rostain, New York Law School, Terence C. Halliday, American Bar Foundation, and Austin Sarat, Amherst College, USA
Whereas lawyers in an earlier period practiced in spheres in which the
parameters, constraints and opportunities created by a single sovereign power
were assumed, lawyers in transnational practice today operate in arenas where
various supra-national, regional, and global regulatory environments,
institutions and networks regulate behavior. These arenas exhibit a remarkable
diversity of maturity and stabilization, with some international legal fields
that are well established and others that are only beginning to take shape.
Transnational lawyers function in environments of intense market-making,
institution-building and law-making.
For purposes of this research network, the meaning of “transnational” is
open-textured. It encompasses: lawyers who work on commercial transactions
involving multiple national jurisdictions; lawyers who work on relations among
sovereign actors, such as nations, and among supra-national actors, such as the
World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund or other similar
institutions; lawyers involved in building supra-national legal regimes and
institutions; and lawyers who mobilize across national borders to advance
social, political and economic agendas, including lawyers working for
international NGO’s and other social movement organizations. It also embraces
lawyers whose causes are advanced through international strategies.
Research projects in the network are encouraged to attend to the following
parameters:
• What kinds of agency do transnational lawyers exercise?
• What are lawyers’ stakes in transnational practice?
• What are the politics of legal globalization?
• What are the processes of legal globalization?
• And what is the impact of transnational lawyers?
[extended description of this CRN]
11. The Cultural Lives of Capital Punishment
Organizer: Austin Sarat Amherst College
The purpose of this CRN to invite inquiry into the cultural life of capital
punishment in democratic and non-democratic countries and in nations which
retain as well as those which have abolished capital punishment. The work of the
CRN is guided by the view that the impact of state killing is not limited to our
political and legal lives. It has a pervasive effect in constituting culture as
well.
Punishment, David Garland tells us, "helps shape the overarching culture and
contribute to the generation and regeneration of its terms." Punishment is a set
of signifying practices that "teaches, clarifies, dramatizes and authoritatively
enacts some of the most basic moral-political categories and distinctions which
help shape our symbolic universe." Punishment lives in culture through its
pedagogical effects. It teaches us how to think about categories like intention,
responsibility and injury, and it models the socially appropriate ways of
responding to injury done to us. Moreover, it exemplifies relations of power and
reminds us of the pervasiveness of vulnerability and pain.
And what is true of punishment in general is certainly true of those instances
in which the punishment is death. State killing is today an occasion for rich
symbolization, for the production of public images of evil or of an unruly
freedom whose only containment is in a state imposed death. This CRN will
explore the cultural lives of capital punishment and connect them to legal and
political controversies surrounding state killing.
12. Critical Research on Race and the Law
Organizers: Sarah N. Gatson and Joseph Jewell, Texas A & M University
The CRN on Critical Research on Race and the Law is "critical" in at least
two different senses. The name suggests an urgency in terms of expanding the
socio-legal studies research agenda to more prominently include race and racial
inequality. The name also is meant to draw upon some of the most exciting work
in the legal academy over the past two decades under the Critical Race Theory
and LatCrit rubrics. Similarly, law and society scholars are drawing
increasingly upon studies of race and ethnicity from diverse disciplines that
incorporate cultural studies and/or critical theory. Scholars in history,
sociology, and anthropology (just to name some of the fields well-represented in
law and society) are doing innovative studies that center race, racial
inequality, and systems of racial classification of great interest to scholars
interested in law and legal institutions. We hope the CRN on Critical Research
on Race and the Law will serve as a space in which scholars interested in race
and the law can engage each others' research projects and more generally network
with each other. Such a space could be especially important, I think, for
younger scholars and/or scholars new to the organization.
13. African Law and Society
The research focus of this CRN is on African law and society. Open to all, this CRN aims to investigate the variety of levels and methods through which African law and society are constituted and change. Recent annual meetings of the LSA have demonstrated that the Law and Society Association’s full potential for scholarship by Africans or about African law and society has not been achieved. Likewise, African scholarship falling broadly within the law and society or socio-legal studies intellectual tradition has not been as prominent as could be the case. Working both within the LSA and Africa, this CRN aims to organize panels for LSA annual meetings in Chicago and beyond. The CRN also aims to promote and facilitate participation in African-located law and society scholarship initiatives. The CRN is also pursuing funding and holding an African Institute, based loosely on the model of the LSA’s Summer Institutes. While the CRN is African rather than South African, this CRN will (at least initially) both recognize and critique the role that South Africa plays in African law and society and in its scholarship.Organizers: Penny Andrews, City University of New York, USA, Mark Kende, Drake University, USA, Jonathan Klaaren, University of Witwatersrand, SOUTH AFRICA
14. Culture, Society, and Intellectual Property
Organizers: William Gallagher, Santa Clara University, and Shubha Ghosh, University at Buffalo, USA
CRN 14 Website
This
CRN seeks to encourage interaction between scholars from diverse
disciplinary perspectives who focus on the legal, social, and cultural
dimensions of intellectual properties--including patents, copyrights,
trademarks, trade secrets, and rights of publicity. One goal of this CRN is to
encourage creatively eclectic approaches to the study of intellectual property
among law and society scholars who draw on traditional doctrinal and policy
analyses, historical analyses, cultural studies analyses, and empirical analyses
of intellectual property law in action. Intellectual properties, and the
processes of globalization of which they are a part, are an especially promising
and important area for collaborative research of the kind that law and society
scholars have long pioneered
15. Negotiation and Conflict Resolution
Organizer: Hiro N. Aragaki, Fordham University, USA
This CRN seeks to provide a forum for scholars working in a variety of disciplines – inter alia, law, sociology, psychology, philosophy, economics, management, international relations, cultural studies, history – to share their research and ideas about “negotiation and conflict resolution,” broadly conceived. The CRN welcomes members interested in transactional negotiation and ‘deal-making’ on the one hand, and those interested in ADR, conflict resolution and peace studies on the other. Established in 2008, this CRN invites past members of the Canon of Negotiation CRN and is actively seeking new members to help further refine its scope and areas of focus. The hope is to facilitate collaboration among researchers from a wide range of backgrounds and nationalities who are interested in empirical, theoretical, policy-based, and perhaps other approaches that seek to push negotiation and conflict resolution studies to the next level.
16. Language and Law
Organizers: Bethany K. Dumas, University of Tennessee, Lawrence M. Solan, Brooklyn Law School, and Peter M. Tiersma, Loyola Law School
The purpose of this CRN is to formalize and expand the international network
of scholars (linguists and others) who have organized and participated in
sessions on language and law since 1990, when the first sessions on Language and
Law were scheduled at the Law and Society Association Annual Meeting. Such
formalization is intended to provide a forum in which language scholars
(linguists, interpreters, translators, and others) and legal scholars and
lawyers can together contribute to a fuller understanding of the complex role of
language in the judicial systems of the world. Our overall aim will be to focus
broadly on the key role of language in judicial process at all levels.
17. Law and Society in Latin America
This CRN aims to foster collaboration among those who study law and society in Latin America, with an emphasis linking scholars based in Latin America with scholars in the United States, and with each other. Our first project will be to organize a conference in Latin America on the themes of judicial reform and anti-corruption policies. The conference will take place in 2005, in Santiago, Chile, or Caracas, Venezuela. Planning for the conference, and further elaboration of the theme, will begin with our first CRN meeting this May in the LSA Annual Meeting in Chicago, and will continue in the International Sociology Association Research Committee on the Sociology of Law, in Puerto Rico in August, 2004. The theme of judicial reform and anti-corruption policies should be interpreted broadly we encourage anthropological, historical, theoretical and interdisciplinary approaches, as well as papers in the social sciences more traditionally associated with reform projects and legal scholarship. Anyone is welcome to join.Organizers: Rogelio Perez Perdomo, Universidad Metropolitana, Caracas, Venezuela, Javier Couso, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile, and Alexandra Huneeus, University of California, Berkeley
18. Law and the Public-Private Dichotomy
Organizers: Brian Gran, Case Western Reserve University
This CRN is devoted to studies of "law" and the public-private dichotomy.
Among its goals is a continuing debate over the role of legal institutions and
processes in shaping the public-private dichotomy for public policy and
institutions. This CRN draws on important historical and cross-national
scholarship with interdisciplinary bases. Scholars in anthropology, history,
law, political science, and sociology, as well as other disciplines, are
undertaking significant, innovative studies that demonstrate the
critical impact of "law" on how the public-private boundary is drawn. We hope
the CRN on Law and the Public-Private Dichotomy will serve as a forum where
scholars interested in how ?law? shapes public policy and institutions. This
CRN especially welcomes scholars new to the Law and Society Association,
especially younger scholars and international scholars.
19. Teaching in Law and Society
Organizers: Jillian Weiss, Ramapo College, and Austin Sarat, Amherst College
This CRN provides a forum for scholars located in a variety of institutional locations — from various disciplinary to interdisciplinary programs, from liberal arts colleges to research institutions — to engage the question of teaching Law and Society courses. The goals of this CRN are threefold: first, to provide a space where LSA members can engage in discussion and debate around the role of teaching in our professional lives; second, to provide opportunities for debate and deliberation of the Law and Society "canon." — that is, what exactly are we teaching in our Law and Society courses and what impact does this have on the boundaries of the field? and, third, this CRN — through sponsored conference panels and other forums — provides space for those teaching L&S course to trade syllabi, teaching tips, course materials, and other practical information on the "doing" of teaching. You can subscribe to the CRN 19 listserv by entering your email address in the box below and clicking the "join now" button.
20. The Legal Complex and Struggles for Political Liberalism
Organizers: Terry Halliday, American Bar Foundation, Malcolm Feeley, University of California, Berkeley, and Lucien Karpik, Ecole des Mines, Paris
Understanding the foundations of political liberalism has become one of most critical issues of the past fifteen years. In recent years a research agenda has developed to explore the relationship between political liberalism and the legal profession. In several historical instances research has shown that lawyers contributed to the emergence of political liberalism (i.e., constitution of the moderate state, civil society, core rights of civil citizenship) in western countries. This CRN extends this research agenda by exploring the conditions under which the legal complex (i.e., configurations of lawyers, judges, legal academics) will contribute to advances towards or retreats from political liberalism in mature democracies, new democracies and countries in transition. We invite scholars from all regions (e.g., Asia, Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, Europe) to join us in the development of empirically-based comparative and historical theories of the legal complex and the fortunes of political liberalism. We intend to hold sessions at the LSA annual meetings, workshops and conferences that lead to the publication of edited volumes that deal with particular regions or aspects of political liberalism. We particularly welcome scholars from outside the United States and from all disciplines that engage this problem. This CRN is organized jointly with the project on the Legal Complex and Political Liberalism, Working Group on Comparative Studies of Legal Professions, Research Committee on the Sociology of Law.
21. Law and Social Movements
This CRN brings together scholars interested in the complex relationship between law and social movements. Social movements use a wide variety of legal strategies – including litigation, lobbying, and administrative advocacy – in their programs for social change. Law, and particularly rights, provides movements with political opportunities and plays a role in the cultural life of a social movement. Law is a contested terrain for social movement struggles: movements rely on rights to frame their grievances, to generate and circulate collective identity, and to recruit and mobilize activists. On the other hand, law and legal strategies can exert a conservative influence on social movements, channeling protest and more radical forms of action into conventional political institutions. Scholars participating in this CRN are working on theoretical and empirical projects on movements throughout the world that explore these and many other issues emerging from social movements’ interactions with law and the legal system. Participants have several long-range goals. We hope to develop collaborative research and writing projects and to create opportunities for publication of CRN research, such as edited volumes and symposia in both law and society journals, as well as outlets in our home disciplines. We plan to share syllabi and other teaching resources for undergraduate and graduate classes on law and social movements. Finally, the CRN will provide opportunities for cross-generational and inter-disciplinary professionalization. Unfortunately, most sociologists do not read the work of McCann, Milner, and Olson. On the other hand, many Law and Society scholars seem unaware of the copious sociological research on social movements. Through the scholarly exchanges facilitated by the CRN, we can correct these oversights and produce richer studies that can inform the debates not just in Law and Society, but also in our home disciplines. The CRN has a website and a blog.Organizers: Scott Barclay, University at Albany, SUNY; Lynn Jones, Northern Arizona University; and Anna-Maria Marshall, University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
22. South Asia
Organizers: Mitra Sharafi, Cambridge University and Marc Galanter, University of Wisconsin-Madison
The purpose of this CRN is to bring together scholars and lawyers working on aspects of law and society in South Asia. The network welcomes those working on social scientific and policy-oriented aspects of contemporary South Asian law as much as those specializing in historical, philosophical, and literary aspects of law. There is a growing "law in context" movement within India that is working to counteract the doctrinal bent of much Indian legal scholarship. The CRN hopes to further this effort by facilitating communication and scholarly initiatives between researchers in South Asia and those outside of it. In the most immediate term, this means providing a forum through which scholars can organize South Asia-related panels for the 2006 Law & Society meeting in Baltimore and the 2007 meeting in Berlin. We welcome suggestions (names with e-mail addresses, if possible) of people who may want to be receive information about this CRN.
23. International Human Rights
Organizers: Laura A. Dickinson, University of Connecticut School of Law, and Sally Engle Merry, New York University
This CRN seeks to bring to the field of international human rights law a more comprehensive discussion of empirical methodologies as well as to focus more attention, within the law and society movement, on international human rights. Although legal scholars are beginning to test the impact and efficacy of international human rights law, this work is still in its infancy and tends to be informed primarily by the methodologies of quantitative political science research. Accordingly, scholars in this field have not sufficiently embraced the broad range of empirical approaches to legal questions that is emblematic of the law and society movement. Meanwhile, law and society scholars—with some notable exceptions—have historically focused on domestic legal regimes and have therefore not sufficiently analyzed international law. Our first meeting will be held in Baltimore, with the aim of organizing a series of panels for the Berlin meeting as well as a training seminar in research methods. Ultimately, our goal is to spawn a series of conferences and publications, which might include not only independent and jointly-authored articles but also multiple, larger book projects.
24. Rule of Law, State Building and Transition
Coordinators: Tom Ginsburg, University of Illinois, Veronica Taylor, University of Washington, and John Ohnesorge, University of Wisconsin
This CRN focuses on the emergence of new development-related legal research and policy formulations. We emphasize work that incorporates socio-legal approaches, broadly defined, and also research and applied policy that would benefit from socio-legal insights. This CRN aims to: bring together scholars who are shaping this new phase of development law through research, policy formation, consulting and teaching; debate key questions, issues and methodologies that animate donor-assisted and domestic law and development and legal institutional reform programs; explore whether the key questions and issues surrounding indigenous and donor-assisted legal reform vary in different regions, particularly Asia; broaden our understanding of scholarly and applied approaches to law and development, in both donor and recipient countries. Implicit in these aims is an understanding that, despite the insights of law and development scholarship in the US during the 1970s, both the political economy of global law and development and the players have changed dramatically in the intervening decades. For this reason we frame this CRN as “rule of law, state-building and transition”, which reflects the multiplicity of disciplines, theoretical standpoints and policy modalities that now shape law reform that is linked to economic and social development worldwide. We aim to make this CRN a broad enough forum to accommodate a range of divergent approaches. To join this CRN listserv send an email to: imailsrv@lawandsociety.org and in the body of the email type Subscribe LawandDevelopment your-last-name, your first name.
25. Collective Human Rights
It is arguable that the international law on human rights, and the range of mechanisms designed to implement those rights, remain too heavily focused on the individual. More contemporary arguments in favour of promoting collective human rights challenge the liberal bias towards individualism and seek to develop rights exercised in community. Socio-legal approaches are particularly well-adapted to the study of collective human rights, in that such approaches give voice to those whose concerns are often stifled by dominant states and dominant legal interpretations. Socio-legal approaches are also capable of promoting the re-configuration of the relationships between people, collectivities, states, and the international community. This CRN will bring together researchers from around the world interested in collective human rights. Their inquiries relate to a range of areas, including self-determination and sovereignty, women’s rights, the rights of Indigenous peoples, language rights, ‘minority’ rights, and the rights of refugees and asylum seekers. Research ranges from theory and philosophy to practical implementation of group rights.Organizers: Amy Maguire, University of Newcastle, Australia, and Paddy Hillyard, Queen’s University Belfast, Ireland
26. Law and Social Theory
Organizers: Susan Silbey, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, and Robert van Krieken University of Sydney, Australia
This CRN aims to foster scholarly collaboration among socio-legal scholars seeking to invigorate theoretical advances in social scientific studies of law. There is now a very wide range of discussion, debate and analysis in social theory that has been productively employed in law and society scholarship. This CRN hopes to identify the convergences, cleavages and productive interactions within these theoretical resources to enable provocative paths of theoretical development and empirical study. In addition, it encourages the conceptual debates and research studies that facilitate the further development of social theoretical understandings of law.
27. Prisons and Prisoners
Organizers: Amy E. Lerman, University of California-Berkeley, USA, and Ben Fleury-Steiner, University of Delaware, USA
The Prisons and Prisoners CRN will bring together scholars from a wide array of fields who are engaged in studying the psychological, social, political, economic, and public health consequences of incarceration. Our aim is to shed light on the traditionally closed environment that is the modern prison; to explore how the “politics of crime” play out on the ground, in different prisons and across different national contexts; to better understand the ramifications of the incarceration experience on individual lives; and to examine the myriad ways in which incarceration affects families, communities and societies. Further, the CRN seeks to foster innovative and rigorous scholarship, to bring new and more established scholars together, and to support cross-disciplinary and cross-national discussion and debate on this important substantive area.
28. Realist and Empirical Legal Methods
Organizer: Elizabeth Mertz, University of Wisconsin, Madison, and American Bar Foundation, USA
For many decades, the law-and-society movement has served as a meeting point for scholars interested in empirical research on law. This CRN focuses explicitly on the process of translation between law and social science. Building from existing and future research, we hope to develop new perspectives on this translation process, perspectives which we then plan to put to use and refine – as well as to disseminate through publications, panels, working groups, and conferences. Bringing together scholars interested in “realist” and “empirical” approaches to law, we will work to build an integrative set of research methods for sociolegal studies. We begin with several specific foci: (1) RIGOROUS TRANSLATION OF LAW AND SOCIAL SCIENCE: First, we do not assume that scholars trained in social science and scholars trained in law can instantly understand each other’s fields with any depth. Rather, we ask what conditions are necessary in order to bridge very different disciplinary traditions. This requires systematic attention to the translation process itself, and to the institutional settings within which translation occurs. (2) INTERDISCIPLINARY METHODS: Second, scholars involved in this CRN work with the full range of available empirical methods – qualitative and quantitative, ethnographic and statistical. Our goal is to encourage a truly interdisciplinary approach, which examines law from the “ground up” as well as the “top down.” Panels sponsored by this CRN at LSA meetings focus largely on research methods, and on translating social science in legal settings (including law school classrooms). We also work to develop conferences, networks, and small working groups which will provide social scientists and law professors with more extended and intensive opportunities to bridge disciplinary divides. More extensive discussion of these ideas, and also links to further resources can be found at www.newlegalrealism.org – and also see relevant discussions on www.elsblog.org.
29. Biotechnology, Bioethics and the Law
Organizer: Michele Goodwin, University of Minnesota Law School and Medical School, USA
This network studies the emerging field of biotechnology as an interdisciplinary discourse. This CRN focuses on multiple disciplinary approaches to bioethical and biotechnological disputes, including law and economics, feminist jurisprudence, legal realism, and critical legal studies. This network is a forum that attempts to bridge the gap between biotechnology and its sister fields, bioethics and intellectual property, rather than casting them in disciplinary isolation. This network serves as a forum to expand the narrow framework of traditional biotech discourse to include an examination of diverse issues underrepresented in conventional scholarship, including bio-piracy, genetic determinism, human commoditization, transhumanism, genetic property, public health, and tort, property, and contract issues in the body. As well, this network adds race, gender, socioeconomics and public policy to the discourse of biotechnology and bioethics. Research and scholarship from scholars in this network will contribute to the foundational blocks in new biotechnology law. The Biotechnology, Bioethics, and The Law CRN serves as a forum for researchers, scholars, and students to contemplate issues where law, science, society, and medicine meet.
30. Law and Counter-Hegemonic Globalization
Organizers: Cesar Rodriguez-Garavito, University of The Andes, COLUMBIA, and University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, University of Coimbra, PORTUGAL, and University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
This CRN is a discussion and publication space for scholars from the global South and the global North engaged in critical sociolegal research and legal advocacy across borders. The activities and publications of the CRN seek to analyze the role of the law in the global movement for social justice. Members’ work combines empirical research on the ground with innovative sociolegal theory to shed new light on a wide array of topics. Among the issues examined thus far are the role of law and politics in the World Social Forum; the struggle of the anti-sweatshop movement for the protection of international labor rights; and the challenge to neoliberal globalization and liberal human rights raised by grassroots movements in India and indigenous peoples around the world. The CRN aims to contribute to developing new social and legal theories capable of capturing the potential and tensions of counter-hegemonic globalization
31. Law, Society and Taxation
Organizer: Neil H. Buchanan, George Washington University Law School, USA
This CRN provides a forum for scholars who are interested in the effects on society of the taxing and spending policies adopted at all levels of government (international, national, state, and local). Subjects of inquiry involve any aspect of government policy with respect to taxing or spending, including distributional effects of government programs, theoretical issues of equity and justice, comparative and international issues, and all other aspects of fiscal policy. Participants are encouraged to apply multi- and interdisciplinary approaches to questions across the range of tax-related scholarship: issues of social and economic inequality, international competition and coordination, comparative aspects of tax law, family issues, sexual orientation and tax law, and so on.
32. Gender and Judging
Organizers: Sally J. Kenney, University of Minnesota, USA, and Ulrike Schultz, Fernuniversität, Hagen, GERMANY
33. East Asian Law and Society
Organizers: Setsuo Miyazawa, Aoyama Gakuin University, Japan, Kay-Wah Chan, Macquarie University, Australia, and Yoshitaka Wada, Waseda University, Japan
Law and society in East Asia are currently in the midst of rapid and fundamental changes, providing fertile grounds for socio-legal research. Using the momentum provided by these changes, this CRN is formed to provide a forum for promoting research on East Asian law and society, and disseminating its findings to a wider community of socio-legal scholarship. Both Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia are covered under this CRN. It welcomes scholars researching on East Asia, and others wishing to enrich their research and theories with findings from the region. Sessions organized by the CRN welcome papers on any aspects or issues of law and society in East Asia. This CRN is also envisioned to grow into an institutional base for the holding of regional LSA meetings on a regular basis in the near future.
34. Law and Indigeneity
Organizers: Eve Darian-Smith, Law and Society Program, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA, Nicholas Buchanan, Program in History and Anthropology of Science and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, and Chris Andersen, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta, Canada
The study of law and indigeneity is international and global in scope, and this CRN seeks to promote much-needed interaction and comparative inquiry between scholars based around the world. We aim to provide a forum that comparatively examines the similarities and differences between colonial/postcolonial/neo-imperial nations with respect to native peoples. Our hope is to expand the discussion of these beyond the discourses of resistance and human rights, to foreground other ways that indigenous peoples engage with the law. By doing so, we hope to promote inquiry into the complex legal landscape that involves multiple layers and meanings of what constitute law for indigenous peoples in the first instance. Alongside issues of legal pluralism, we aim to stress the multiple sites of knowledge production that inform issues of indigeneity and that contextualize the engagement of native peoples with formal and informal legal institutions. The CRN is founded on the belief that a full understanding of what it means to be indigenous is impossible without taking the legal into direct consideration. Nor can we fully understand legality in non-indigenous societies without acknowledging the law’s ever-present connections to native peoples.
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35. Legal Geography
Organizers: David Delaney. Amherst College, USA, and Sandy Kedar, Haifi University Law School, ISRAEL
For more than a decade legal geography (broadly understood) has been described as an emerging field of inquiry within socio-legal scholarship. While interest in the significance of spatiality, place and landscape to the workings of the legal is increasing in quantity and sophistication there are few avenues for promoting productive exchanges among scholars scattered across a number of disciplines. The principal objective of the Legal Geography CRN is to facilitate communication and collaboration among interested scholars. The focus of our endeavor is the relationship between those topics conventionally investigated by geographers (space, spatiality, place, borders, mobility, circulation, landscape and so on) and those of interest to socio-legal scholars. However, we wish to promote transdisciplinary perspectives on these relationships and welcome the participation of anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, historians, philosophers, workers in cultural studies, environmental studies and so on. The CRN will also be dedicated to the principle of theoretical and normative plurality.
36. Transnational Legal Orders
Organizer: Gregory Shaffer, Loyola University Chicago School of Law, USA
This CRN will address the processes through which international organizations and transnational networks create law and legal norms, and in the process, shape national and international social, political and economic fields. It will examine these processes at the international and transnational levels, their articulation with national legal processes, and their impact on relations of economic, social and political power. International organizations, trans-governmental networks, and the increasing involvement of non-state actors at the global level, including corporations and non-governmental organizations, affect and govern public and private interactions more extensively and intensively than ever before. The CRN will examine the role of actors and mechanisms in the creation of transnational law, norms and legal orders and their impact on domestic law and practice through processes of transformation and resistance.
37. Private Practice Lawyers
Organizers: William Henderson, Ken Dau-Schmidt, Lauren Robel, Indiana University School of Law--Bloomington, and Robert Nelson, American Bar Foundation, USA
Over the last three decades, the proportion of legal work performed for the corporate legal sector has grown dramatically. This shift in employment patterns reflects a large and understudied sea change in the legal profession. The Collaborative Research Network studies the changing economics and sociology of private sector lawyers and law firms. Topics of interests to our researchers include: changing professional norms; labor markets; law firm management; the balance of power among interest groups (e.g., AAJ [formerly ALTA] versus the U.S. Chamber of Commerce); access to justice for the poor and middle class; the role of elite lawyers in the democratic process; the relationship between firm size, working conditions, professional autonomy, and lawyer satisfaction; and the viability of current models of self regulation. In addition to advancing scholarship on the legal profession, this CRN has two subsidiary goals: (1) creating and sharing of qualitative and quantitative data on private practice lawyers; (2) exploring the potential of socio-legal studies as teaching materials within law schools.
If you wish to organize a CRN on a topic not covered by others, contact David Engel with your proposal, including a brief description. If the CRN is approved it will be added to this list for solicitation of members.
