Editor: Ronald M. Pipkin
Department of Legal Studies
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003

Law and Society

NEWSLETTER MARCH 2010

Table of Contents

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President’s Message

Haiti: Race, Colonialism, Law and Why Context Matters

By Laura Gómez

I very much look forward to seeing many of you in May at the annual meeting; we return to the Renaissance Hotel in Chicago, and this year is expected to be another record-setting meeting with 2,000 participating scholars.  The annual meeting theme – After Critique: What is Left of the Law & Society Paradigm?– addresses itself to both internal and external dynamics.  Internally, the 2010 Program Committee, under the leadership of Patricia Ewick and Austin Sarat, has invited us to take stock of the field in a context of what many perceive as significant challenges to our central premises.  Thursday afternoon’s plenary session with Scott Barclay (National Science Foundation and University of Albany, SUNY), Jennifer Culbert (Johns Hopkins), Mariana Valverde (Toronto) will engage these themes, and we will have an opportunity to continue the conversation in the Welcoming Reception immediately following the plenary.

I would like to highlight one additional event at this year’s annual meeting, one which gets to the external dynamics of the After Critique theme.  Saturday’s awards luncheon will feature a speech by Stanford Law School Professor and former LSA member Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar, who currently works at the White House as Special Assistant to the President for Justice and Regulatory Policy. Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuellar Rarely do we have the chance to hear directly from someone working at the nexus of government policy and socio-legal scholarship.  Cuéllar will speak to the Obama Administration’s responses to what he sees as the key domestic policy challenges.  Cuéllar holds a J.D. from Yale and Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford; he writes and teaches in the areas of criminal law, immigration, administrative law, and national security.  Cuéllar grew up in rural California close to the U.S.-Mexico border, and he chaired the Obama-Biden Transition Team’s Immigration Policy Working Group.  We expect the luncheon to be over-subscribed, and I encourage you to register for the annual meeting and reserve your seat for the May 29 luncheon (http://www.lawandsociety.org/).


Why Context Matters in Haiti

By the time you read this newsletter, it will have been almost two months since the devastating earthquake of January 12, 2010 in Haiti.  It has, however, been scarcely two weeks since a massive 8.8 earthquake hit Chile.  Despite the fact that the Chilean earthquake was 500 times stronger than the Haitian earthquake, the damage toll cuts in the other direction, although I do not mean in any way to minimize the human and economic toll in Chile.  The two situations cry out for context, some of which I offer here by way of describing the historical trajectory of U.S.-Haitian relations.

Haiti has mostly faded from the American media agenda, and, despite a flurry of 24-hour news coverage in the month following the earthquake, most of us still have little knowledge of the history that produced Haiti’s 21st century crisis.  Without that anchoring in Haitian history, those of us from the world’s affluent nations tend to take for granted a kind of common sense about Haiti: that generations of Haitians are to blame for its poverty, history of military dictators and/or corrupt bureaucrats, and, most emphatically, that we have little to do with Haiti’s present condition.  (We see hear a very different narrative about Chile—about the Chilean government’s capacity and the country’s modernization evident via building codes, and the like.)  In this brief column, I intend to propose a counter-narrative which centers race, colonialism, imperialism, and law—topics central to a long tradition within law and society within which I have written (see Gómez, 2007).

Anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer sets the tone for the lopsided, yet inextricably inter-connected nature of the Haitian/U.S. relationship:

“The United States and Haiti are something other than the richest and the poorest countries in the hemisphere; they are also its two oldest republics.  Rarely, in fact, have two countries been as closely linked as the United States and Haiti. Haitians are, by and large, fully aware of this historical fact. But citizens of the United States are, by and large, oblivious to these links …”

(Farmer, 1994, 46-47).  

At the peak of its power as a slave-based French colony in the 18th century, Haiti was a world-leader in the production and export of coffee, rum, cotton, and indigo, generating more revenue than all thirteen U.S. colonies combined on the eve of the American Revolution (Farmer, 1994; DuBois, 2004).  Haiti’s economic success was built squarely on the legally sanctioned slave labor imported from Africa, and Haiti’s variety of slavery was particularly brutal, compared to its neighbors in the Americas, leading to early deaths of fully one-third of imported slaves (Farmer, 1994, 63).  On the eve of the Haitian Revolution, Haiti had 500,000 slaves, 25,000 free people of color, and 31,000 White colonists (DuBois and Garrigus, 2006, 15).

In 1791 Haitian slaves revolted against their White and mulatto masters.  Led by former slave Toussaint Louverture, an army of former slaves (and a much smaller number of free men of color) defeated 28,000 French soldiers in Haiti between 1801 and 1803 to achieve Haiti’s independence (Farmer, 1994, 71).  In 1804 Haiti became the hemisphere’s second republic and its first Black republic.  France waited 21 years to recognize its former colony’s independence.  When it finally did, it forced Haiti to pay “a debilitating indemnity” to France that would plague Haiti until the early 20th century (DuBois and Garrigus, 2006, 39), the legacy of which many blame for Haiti’s continuing poverty. 

The U.S. took advantage of a weakened France to negotiate the Louisiana Purchase in 1804 (DuBois, 2004, 304), but it waited until the Civil War to recognize its sister republic.  The U.S. officially recognized Haiti only in 1862, when President Lincoln saw it as advantageous to do so because he hoped large numbers of newly emancipated American slaves would migrate to Haiti (he recognized Liberia for the same reason that year) (Chomsky, 1994, 16; DuBois, 2004, 303).  

Despite Americans’ refusal to engage Haiti as a political equal, we engaged economically, and by 1921 almost half of Haiti’s imports came from the U.S. (Farmer, 1994, 78).  When U.S. Marines invaded Haiti in 1915 it was with a two-pronged geo-political agenda – securing Haiti as a market, but also in order to control Haitian waters as the gateway to the Panama Canal (Farmer, 1994, 89-90).  A year later, U.S. invaded the Dominican Republic, leaving only when it had installed the brutal Rafael Trujillo regime (Farmer, 1994, 102).  The U.S. occupied Haiti for more almost two decades, leaving in 1934 after saddling Haiti with a crippling $40 million loan and allowing a New York bank to take control of the Haitian national bank (Farmer, 1994, 102).

Later, the anti-communist agenda drove U.S. policy toward Haiti for decades after World War II.  We backed “Papa Doc” Duvalier’s brutal dictatorship from 1957 to 1971 because of his anti-Soviet stance, and we supported his son “Baby Doc” Duvalier from 1971 to 1986 for the same reason (Farmer, 1994; Golash-Boza, 2010).  Recently declassified documents from the early 1960s clearly reveal these objectives: “the overriding objective is to deny Haiti to the communists; in short-term political terms, the U.S. desires to assure Haiti’s support of the U.S. on matters of importance in the OAS, UN, and other international organizations; [and] the U.S. has the continuing objective of protecting private American citizens and property interests in Haiti” (as quoted in Farmer, 1994, 109).

Finally beginning to recover from decades of violent rule by the Duvaliers, Haitians elected former Catholic Priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide as their leader in 1991.  Aristide won two-thirds of the popular vote, beating out a U.S.-supported former World Bank official (Chomsky, 1994, 23).  But, only eight months later, the CIA backed an anti-Aristide coup because of the socialist policies he was implementing to address Haiti’s extreme poverty (Farmer, 1994, 181).  Three years later, when the U.S. affair with Haiti’s military leadership had cooled, the U.S. restored Aristide to power – but with conditions including the U.S. military occupation from 1994-2000 (and again with combined UN-U.S. forces beginning in 2004) (Chomsky, 1994, 39). 

We must view the current presence of 20,000 American troops in Haiti against the backdrop of this history of repeated American military invasions of Haiti, literally throughout the 20th century, beginning in 1915 and in the 1990s.  Moreover, it was the U.S. Agency for International Development’s policies in the 1990s that promoted the conversion of subsistence farmers in Haiti to farm laborers in an export-oriented agricultural economy—at the same time dumping excess U.S. agricultural products on Haiti (Golash-Boza, 2010).  The effort failed but not before Haiti’s rural poor migrated to urban areas like Port Au Prince, where there were not enough jobs to employ them and where they were forced to reside in housing made of substandard building materials that could not withstand the 2010 earthquake (ibid). 

Haitian Migration and U.S. Refugee Law

Is it any wonder given the economic, political, and military ties that have bound the U.S. and Haiti for two centuries, that residents of the hemisphere’s poorest country would seek to migrate to its wealthiest country?  The history of Haitian migration to the U.S. goes back longer than that of virtually any other country.  It began in the 1790s when White and free people of color fled the Haitian Revolution, settling mostly in what is now Louisiana (DuBois and Garrigus, 2006, 34).  Today, one in twenty Haitians calls the U.S. home, for a total of 535,000 Haitians living in the U.S., according to the 2000 Census.

In 1980 the U.S. enacted landmark refugee legislation, promising basic due process rights to everyone entering the U.S. who was seeking political asylum.  Within only a few months of the law’s enactment, however, the Reagan Administration summarily blocked Haitians from benefitting from the law by entering a bilateral agreement with Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier (Musalo, et al., 2007).  It was this policy that resulted in the mass detention of thousands of Haitians in Miami’s Krome detention facility; a dehumanizing process that did not end until federal courts ruled it illegal in 1983 (Musalo, et al., 2007, 94).  The 1980s policy was only one instance of the American government’s history of overt discrimination against Haitian asylum-seekers, culminating in Haitians having the lowest rate of asylum approval of any nationality (Musalo, et al., 2007, 93).

The Clinton Administration changed the policy in 1994, but things got worse, not better.  In the 1990s, almost 16,000 Haitians seeking to enter the U.S. were detained at Guantanamo Bay, where in August 1994 they rioted to protest crowded and inhumane conditions (Musalo, et al., 94, 130).  After the earthquake, President Obama announced a temporary stay on deportations of Haitians from the U.S. that affects an estimated 76,000 Haitians living here without legal permission (and potentially 230,000 Haitians who have legal permanent resident status).

Compared to its Caribbean neighbors, Haiti has always been treated differently by the U.S.  As a federal territory controlled by the U.S., Puerto Ricans are free to go back and forth between the island and the U.S.  Mostly light-skinned Cubans were welcomed as political refugees in the 1960s under the Cuban Adjustment Act.  Even in 1980, when 125,000 mostly dark-skinned Cubans arrived in Miami (the so-called Marielitos), the Carter Administration made them eligible for U.S. citizenship even as Haitians were summarily turned away (Musalo, et al., 2007, 140).  But, for Haitians, who are, of course, overwhelmingly Black, the U.S. showed “a pattern of discrimination which began in 1964,” according to the federal judge who decided Haitian Refugee Center v. Civiletti in 1993 (Musalo, et al., 2007, 93).

Racialization operates in geographically-based steps in the Caribbean (Roth, 2009; Duany, 2009), so that Haitians are subordinated as true Blacks in the Dominican Republic, where they are the largest immigrant group and where Dominicans have cultivated an identity and history as “indios” (Candelario, 2007), as I will explain in more detail below.  In turn, Dominican migrants in Puerto Rico (where since the 1970s they have been the largest immigrant group) occupy the least desirable jobs and a lowest racial status.  In the U.S., all three groups often are racialized by Whites and other non-white groups as Black and sometimes (but not always) adopt a Black identity (Roth, 2009; see also Duany, 2009).

In particular, the dynamics of antihaitianismo in the Dominican Republic deserve deeper description.  Sociologist Wendy Roth notes that antihaitianismo as an official racial ideology arose under the Trujillo regime in the 1930s (Roth, 2009, 220).  The U.S. backed Trujillo, who in 1937 ordered the massacre of tens of thousands of Haitians, aiming, literally, to rid the Dominican Republic of black bodies in the form of Haitian migrants.  At the same time, Trujillo’s goal was to institutionalize (via a range of mechanisms) a racial ideology that constructed Dominicans as Spanish-Indian mestizos, rather than as a people with an extensive African heritage (Candelario, 2007, 14). 

These events were by no means unconnected with American imperialism and the propagation of global racism, but, rather, were produced by and productive of them.  Almost simultaneously with the successful revolt of Haiti’s slaves, the U.S. began to cultivate the Dominican Republic as the White (or, at least, whiter) side of a strategically important island.  According to sociologist Ginetta Candelario, “the Dominican Republic was a useful and willing non-black antithesis to Haiti and its black liberation agenda” (Candelario, 2007, 43).  At least five American presidents between 1841 and 1877 seriously explored taking possession of the Dominican Republic; each time, the roadblock was the problem of what to do with its nonwhite population (Candelario, 2007, 45).  While whiter than Haitians, Dominicans were never white enough for U.S. standards (for an analysis of similar issues regarding the annexation of northern Mexico in 1848, see Gómez, 2007).

We should heed Paul Farmer’s call to learn more about Haiti at this moment when the First World’s attention turns to Haiti in the wake of the January earthquake and what will be decades of effects from the devastation.  But, in doing so, we should embrace context to understand that Haiti’s present and future are the result of centuries of colonialism, imperialism and racism, all buttressed by law.  To do otherwise is to continue to allow Haitians to understand very clearly the history and context of the current patterns of U.S. intervention (and to justifiably worry about American motives), while we remain free to think of ourselves as altruistically-motivated rescuers.

References

Candelario, Ginetta E.B. 2007. Black Behind the Ears: Dominican Racial Identity from Museums to Beauty Shops. Duke University Press.

Chomsky, Noam. 1994. “Introduction,” The Uses of Haiti, by Paul Farmer. Common Courage Press.

Duany, Jorge. 2009. “Racializing Ethnicity in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean: A comparison of Haitians in the Dominican Republic and Dominicans in Puerto Rico.”  In How the U.S. Racializes Latinos, eds. Jose A. Cobas, Jorge Duany, and Joe R. Feagin.  Paradigm Publishers.

DuBois, Larent. 2004. Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution. Harvard University Press.

DuBois, Laurent and John D. Garrigus. 2006. Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804: A Brief History with Documents. St. Martin’s.

Farmer, Paul. 1994. The Uses of Haiti. Common Courage Press.

Golash-Boza, Tanya. 2010. “Global Capitalism and Devastation in Haiti.” Dissident Voice, Jan. 18, 2010.  http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/01/.

Gómez, Laura. 2007.  Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race. New York University Press.

Musalo, Karen, Jennifer Moore and Richard A. Boswell, eds. 2007. Refugee Law and Policy: A Comparative and International Approach (3d edition). Carolina Academic Press.

Roth, Wendy D. 2009. “Transnational Racializations: The Extension of Racial Boundaries from Receiving to Sending Societies.” In How the U.S. Racializes Latinos, eds. Jose A. Cobas, Jorge Duany, and Joe R. Feagin.  Paradigm Publishers.


LSA 2010 Chicago Meeting

By Patricia Ewick and Austin Sarat, Co-Chairs 2010 Program Committee

Planning for the Chicago meeting is nearing completion. We are grateful to our colleagues on this year's program committee for their work in putting together what looks like a very interesting meeting.

Our theme is AFTER CRITIQUE: What is Left of the Law and Society Paradigm? The meeting will feature a series of theme sessions that will run throughout the meeting.  Those sessions will revisit some classic “critical assessments” of law and society work. Each will feature three readers looking back at the featured piece and thinking about its contemporary relevance. In addition, there will be a single plenary session in which three distinguished law and society scholars (Jennifer Culbert, Scott Barclay, and Mariana Valverde) will assess the direction of law and society research in light of both its own history and world events.

We look forward to seeing you in Chicago.

2010 Program Committee

Patty Ewick, co-chair

Austin Sarat, co-chair

Rick Abel

Michal Alberstein

Jennifer Culbert

Ariela Gross

Kaaryn Gustafson

Stephen Lee

Bill Maurer

Sherene Razack

Mary Romero

Clifford Rosky

Local Arrangements

Lisa Frohmann


Welcome to Chicago!

by Lisa Frohmann Chair, LSA Chicago Local Arrangements Organizing Committee

In addition to the academic program, there are many other reasons to come to Chicago. We are home to world–renowned art museums including the Field museum (home to Sue, the largest and most complete T-Rex fossil ever discovered), the Art Institute (home to Monet’s Water Lilies and Rembrandt’s self-portrait) with its new modern wing and our famous Children’s Museum on Navy Pier. If you prefer art galleries to museums, take a walk through wicker park or river north.

Enjoy Chicago’s celebrated architecture with a tour on the river or on foot and explore our great city. Cool off by the lake with a walk through Millennium Park or Northerly Island, or rent a bike and ride on the miles of bike paths that criss-cross the city and parallel the lake.

For theatergoers Chicago is home to numerous small and medium size theater companies. Take the opportunity to view an award winning production before it moves to Broadway.  If you want to laugh, check out Second City comedy club.

For those interested in music, Chicago has an amazing blues and jazz scene with more clubs than you can count!  If you prefer classical music, we have a world-class orchestra and opera.

For you foodies out there, Chicago offers an amazing variety of taste sensations to tempt your palate.

To get started planning your other activities, visit http://www.cityofchicago.org/. For very comprehensive and detailed listings about the accessibility of local transportation, hotels, restaurants, and city attractions, see http://www.easyaccesschicago.org/.

We look forward to seeing you soon in Chicago! 


Law and Social Science Dissertation and Mentoring Program 

Fellows for 2010-12 

The Law and Social Science Dissertation Fellowship and Mentoring Program committee (Tom Romero, Jeannine Bell, Eric Ishiwata, Victoria Saker Woeste, Robert L. Nelson, Osagie Obasogie, and Laura Beth Nielsen) has chosen two recipients for the 2010-12 Fellowships. Shaun Ossei-Owusu and Kimberly Welch will join current fellows, Jamillah Bowman, Rashmee Singh and Jamie Longazel, in residence at the American Bar Foundation in Chicago. A brief description of their research interests follows. The Law and Social Science Dissertation Fellowship and Mentoring Program is a collaborative effort sponsored by the American Bar Association and the Law and Society Association, with funding from the National Science Foundation (Law and Social Science Division). The fellowship will sponsor 12 PhD students, each for two years, over a five-year period, 2008-2012 and is designed for third and fourth year graduate students whose research includes law and inequality. The application for the next round will be posted on the LSA and ABF websites this summer.

Shaun Ossei-Owusu is pursuing his Ph.D. in African Diaspora Studies at the University of California, Berkeley studying urban marginality. He completed an MLA in Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.  In an attempt to bring together traditional criminology and critical race theory, Mr. Ossei-Owusu asks: how do race, class and gender influence individual experiences and perceptions of crime as well as broader cultural assumptions about criminality and criminal justice institutions? His dissertation probes individuals' experiences of and orientations toward crime at the micro-level, understanding the relationship between crime and discrimination, as well as the consequences of maldistributed penalties, social burdens, and legal resources for US society. He has published extensively on post-racism, the normalization of violence against women in hip hop, and discretion in criminal law and is the recipient of the Berkeley Empirical Legal Studies Fellowship and a National Science Foundation grant. 

Kimberly Welch is a doctoral candidate in History at the University of Maryland after completing her MA in American History at American University. Ms. Welch's research of local legal culture in Louisiana and Mississippi is based on lower court records of interactions between subordinated people in the Old South (slaves, free people of color, and women) and the law from 1820 - 1860. Ms. Welch's careful analysis of several thousand lower court records and manuscripts of lower court trials demonstrates the important ways that subordinated individuals often were the agents, not just the objects of law.  Her research has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon fellowship for research in original sources.



LSA Executive Officer Search

The Law and Society Association seeks a new Executive Officer to commence his or her term in September 2012. The Search Committee invites letters of interest or nominations of potential candidates with the substantive commitment to advance the law and society field and the leadership and administrative skills to accomplish that ambition for the Association.

The Executive Officer position entails a range of administrative and substantive duties related to effective management, conceptual leadership and implementation of goals and policies, work with officers and members, and representation of the Association to external groups. The Executive Officer carries out professional activities designed to promote the interests of the Association and its programmatic activities, member relations, the administrative and financial management of the Association, coordination of activities involved in site selection and conduct of the Annual Meeting, and related programmatic and management responsibilities consonant with the scholarly objectives of the Association. The Executive Officer receives supplemental compensation for this position that is expected to complement a faculty, research, or other appointment in an academic, research, or similar setting. A full position description as well as further information on the Law and Society Association is available on the LSA website at http://www.lawandsociety.org/.

The Search Committee seeks initial expressions of interest in advance of the 2010 Annual Meeting on May 27-30th in Chicago. The Committee plans to hold meetings with possible candidates at the 2010 Annual Meeting in Chicago on May 27-30, with formal submission of applications due by July 15, 2010. The Committee intends to complete the search and report to the Executive Committee by winter 2011 so that the Board of Trustees can finalize a choice in 2011, allowing sufficient time for an effective transition between incoming and outgoing Executive Officers. 

Please direct all letters of potential interest or nominations to Felice Levine (American Educational Research Association and Chair of the Search Committee Chair) at flevine@aera.net. Those wishing to talk further about the position should also send an e-mail in advance to schedule a call. Other members of the Search Committee include: Jeannine Bell, Indiana University; Shari Seidman Diamond, Northwestern University & American Bar Foundation; Bryant Garth, Southwestern Law School; Rogelio Perez-Perdomo, Universidad Metropolitana, Caracas; Ron Pipkin, University of Massachusetts & Law and Society Association.


Membership and Professional Issues Committee

News & An Inquiry

The Membership & Professional Issues Committee is delighted to sponsor a roundtable at the annual meeting on the timely topic of the relation between the Law & Society Association and other "Law and" organizations. Recently other "law and" groups have proliferated – not only law and economics and law and history, but groups oriented around empirical legal studies and law and humanities as well. The growth of such groups warrants a reexamination of the role of the Law & Society Association and, in particular, a careful a consideration of how LSA might best complement and compete with these other organizations. A diverse set of panelists – Lawrence Friedman, Tom Tyler, Laura Rosenbury, Ariela Gross, and Tom Baker – will shed light on this timely topic. Rick Banks will chair.

An Inquiry to LSA members:

There have been reports that various legal studies or other law & society-related undergraduate programs may be at particular risk during this time of budget cuts. To address these concerns, LSA President Laura Gómez has asked a sub-committee of the Membership and Professional Issues Committee to survey the LSA membership to see if these reports do represent a worrisome trend or if they are only scattered instances. Any members who have information of significant cutbacks or closures that target law & society undergraduate programs are invited to contact Richard Perry (at Richard.Perry@sjsu.edu) and/or Thomas Hilbink (at thilbink@sorosny.org).


Request for Proposals for

Second Law & Society Reader

The Law and Society Association has decided to publish a second Law & Society Reader, consisting of articles from the Law & Society Review. The first Law & Society Reader (edited by Richard Abel and published by NYU Press in 1995) has been adopted in a wide variety of courses. Given the inevitable time lag in publication, the most recent article in the first Reader appeared in 1990. LSA seeks proposals for a second Reader, selected from articles published in LSR since 1990.

Proposals should include the categories within which articles will be grouped, an explanation of those categories and the principles of selection within them, and one or more illustrative articles within each category. (A complete tentative table of contents would be welcome but is not required.) We urge proposals to emphasize changes in the field in the last two decades with respect to subject matter, theory, methodology, and research situs. The Reader should be suitable for adoption in a variety of law and society courses. Because this Reader will be limited to about 500 pages, articles eventually will have to be edited for length (as in the first Reader); but the exemplary articles need not be edited at this time. The first Reader included an introductory essay, as well as discussion questions following each article; but the new editor is free to choose another format (including introductions to each section and suggestions for further reading, not necessarily limited to LSR articles). Royalties would go to LSA (as they did with the first Reader).

Proposals are due by April 30. Joint proposals by more than one editor are encouraged. The proposal should include the CVs of each editor. Proposals should be e-mailed to the LSA Publications Committee: Richard Abel (abel@law.ucla.edu); Kim Economides (kim.economides@otago.ac.nz); Bert Kritzer (kritzer@umn.edu); and Carroll Seron (mailto:seron@uci.edu Questions should be directed to Rick Abel. The committee will submit a report to the LSA Board of Trustees, which will make the final decision.



International Activities Committee

Join members of the International Activities Committee and colleagues from many regions of the world at the International Breakfast at the Annual Meeting in Chicago, Friday, May 28, 7:00-8:00 a.m. The purpose of the “International Breakfast” is to encourage the building of relationships between U.S. and international members and to discuss ideas and suggestions on ways LSA can best serve its international members and facilitate international scholarly activity. Tickets for the International Breakfast may be purchased when registering for the Annual Meeting (see http://www.lawandsociety.org/). For more information, contact Penelope Andrews and Heinz Klug.


East Asian Law and Society Conference

by Hiroshi Fukurai (UC Santa Cruz), Kaywah Chan (Macquarie University)

& Setsuo Miyazawa (Aoyama Gakuin University)

The Inaugural East Asian Law and Society Conference was held from February 5-6, 2010 in the vibrant city of Hong Kong. Nearly 160 delegates gathered from the U.S., Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Iran, the U.K., Sweden, Australia, France, Canada, Hong Kong, and Singapore, as well as from many other countries.  This conference represented the first step in the realization of the vision of the CRN-East Asian Law and Society (CRN-EALS) – growing into an institutional base for the holding of regional LSA meetings on a regular basis.  The CRN-EALS covers legal issues and concerns in the region of Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia.

Papers and presentations all expressed the depth of deep concern about social and legal equities, academic energy and scholarly research documenting recent legal developments in Asia. The presentations also provided fertile grounds for future socio-legal research and collaboration. The conference offered a total of 24 concurrent sessions, covering lay participation in legal institutions, legal education, constitutional reforms, colonial policing and legacies, changing legal consciousness, judicial impacts on environment, gender in law, development and operation of alternative dispute resolution, surveys of legal and administrative institutions and processes, new regional approaches to territorial disputes in East Asia, changing landscape on legal professionalism, women’s issues related to multiculturalism, human rights, and the legal professions, as well as regionally-focused topics such as China’s changing socio-economic-legal landscape and administrative and judicial reforms in Japan.

The opening keynote speakers included preeminent legal scholars: former LSA President Professor Malcolm Feeley, Professor Zhenmin Wang (Tsinghua University), Professor Johannes Chan (University of Hong Kong), and Professor Setsuo Miyazawa (Chairman of the CRN-EALS).  Similarly the closing speakers included Professor Terence Halliday (American Bar Foundation), Professor Tom Ginsburg (University of Chicago), Professor Hualing Fu (University of Hong Kong), and Professor Soogeun Oh (Ewha Women's University).  The welcome reception was sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Professor Eric Feldman gave the welcome speech. 

During and after the conference, many delegates enjoyed a planned ferry trip to Tsim Sha Tsui, sightseeing to the Giant Buddha and monastery in Hong Kong and the interesting city of Macau.  A shuttle bus service was provided for transport between the conference hotels and various panel locations.  The Hong Kong Tourism Board and the University of Hong Kong provided the institutional and logistical support to the inaugural conference.  The Law Society of Hong Kong also welcomed the organizing committee.   Preparatory support and invaluable assistance were also provided by staff members of the University of Hong Kong, students of Macquarie University in Australia, as well as staff members and students at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the U.S.  Using the momentum provided by this conference, the planning for the next regional meeting in 2012/2013 has already begun, and currently a steering committee is working on the details of the meeting. In addition to the plan to hold regional conferences on a regular basis, CRN-EALS also continues to organize exciting sessions at the annual LSA meetings including this year’s Chicago meeting in May. 


Consortium for Undergraduate Law and Justice Programs

by William Rose, Albion College

On Wednesday, May 26 (from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.) the Consortium of Undergraduate Law and Justice Programs will hold its annual meeting in the Woods Conference Room of the American Bar Foundation in Chicago (4th Floor, 750 North Lake Shore Drive). We invite all with an interest in undergraduate legal studies to join us. 

We are in the midst of an especially challenging time for interdisciplinary law and justice programs; but it also is a moment of great opportunity. Many law and society scholars reside in interdisciplinary programs and understand well the importance of this environment to nurturing cross-cutting intellectual, teaching, and research agendas. However, because of their inherently interdisciplinary nature, our programs face unique challenges, even in the best of times; but particularly so in difficult financial times when university and college administrators are cutting budgets and reorganizing programs.  In an educational environment still organized around long-established disciplines and departments, we must make a special effort to explain the many important contributions our programs can make to the changing world of higher education.  To the end of thinking about how best to meet these challenges and make good on the opportunities available to us, this year’s meeting will be devoted to a focused discussion on the problems and promises of undergraduate legal studies. The meeting will feature three separate roundtable discussions, with participants coming from a range of different types of programs in the United States and Canada.  To open this important conversation to a larger audience, the Consortium also has put together a roundtable for the LSA meeting (titled: “The Present and Future of Undergraduate Legal Studies Programs”).

The Consortium was founded nearly a decade ago, with the specific purpose of providing support to, and nurturing the development of, the increasing number of college and university interdisciplinary law and justice programs.  Member programs range from very large ‘stand alone’ departments, with their own tenure lines and hundreds of majors, to very small concentrations that are housed in traditional disciplines.  What we share, however, is an understanding of the important place of interdisciplinary legal studies in the undergraduate curriculum, of studying law for its own sake, and not as part of a pre-professional program.  Our annual meetings provide an ideal forum to engage with issues central to our teaching and scholarly activity.  The discussions range from very practical ones about how to structure gateway or capstone courses, to more theoretical problems related to a law and justice curriculum and its relationship to our scholarly interests, to larger questions concerning the nature of the production of knowledge about law in undergraduate legal studies. 

The Consortium’s web site (http://www.culjp.org/) serves as a clearinghouse for information about teaching in and administering law and justice programs.  In addition, the web site provides links to our member programs, and offers teaching and advising resources for interested faculty and program administrators.  Most importantly, the web site provides information about how to join the Consortium.  If you have any questions about our Chicago Meeting, the LSA Roundtable, or the Consortium generally, please feel free to contact me directly (William Rose, Albion College, wrose@albion.edu).


ABA Presidential Initiative on Diversity in the Profession

by Margaret Montoya, University of New Mexico

Hot off the press is a preliminary edition of the report, "Diversity in the Legal Profession: Next Steps Report and Recommendations," which lays out a series of proposals for action by the ABA and the rest of the legal profession to advance diversity encompassing race and ethnicity, gender, disability, and sexual orientation. We urge you to read the report, and e-mail your thoughts to the Center at diversity@staff.abanet.org. A final version of the report will be issued in early April, and comments received by March 15 will inform that presentation. But this is an ongoing discussion, one that we envision continuing and growing new ideas and new energy for accomplishments ahead.

Your comments will help fuel that dialogue, at this discussion site:

https://unmsol.unm.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://new.abanet.org/centers/diversity/Pages/NextStepsComments.aspx

Share the report. Direct your colleagues to the online version,

https://unmsol.unm.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://new.abanet.org/centers/diversity/Pages/NextStepsComments.aspx,

and give us your feedback. We want to learn: 1)  Your general comments about the substance, 2) Your ideas on how to broadly disseminate its content. If you think particular groups or individuals should receive it, please provide those names. 3) Other information on relevant diversity research in the past five years that would be helpful to include in an addendum. 4) Details about existing diversity resources that will help individuals and organizations implement these recommendations. The report's authors included a series of "Emerging Issues," short descriptions of developments in law or policy or practices that they felt should be highlighted. We invite you to comment on these highlighted issues. The "Diversity Dialogue" includes questions and observations to prompt reflection, debate, and, ultimately, progress. The report also provides "Rationales for Diversity," which are contrasted with rationales for diversity in medicine. The section on "Trends and Disappointments" examines whether programs or ideas are taking hold in several places, whether programs flourished or failed, and what seemed to work or not to work.


A Tribute to Masaji Chiba:

A Scholar & Mediator of Different Cultures

by Takanori Kitamura, School of Law, Tokai University, Japan

Professor emeritus Dr. Masaji Chiba passed away after a short illness on December 17, 2009 at the age of 90. Dr. Chiba was an internationally recognized figure in the fields of legal anthropology, the sociology of law, and the philosophy of law. A longtime member of the Law and Society Association in the U.S. as well as a founding member of the Japanese Association of the Sociology of Law. Professor. Chiba and his many contributions were recognized by the LSA in 2003 when he was awarded its International Prize. The community of sociolegal studies worldwide has lost a dedicated and beloved scholar and teacher.   

Professor Chiba started his academic carrier as a lecturer of the philosophy of law, and gradually shifted his academic interests to more sociologically and anthropologically oriented legal studies. Over the years he wrote numerous books in Japanese reflecting his passion for interdisciplinary research and analysis, such as The Anthropology of Law in the Modern World (1969), The  Sociology of Law on Festivity (1970), and Legal Pluralism in Asia (1998), to cite only a few of them.

I first met Chiba-sensei some 30 years ago, when I was an undergraduate student who read and admired his work. I was surprised and delighted when he responded to my modest fan letter with a warm response encouraging me to attend his graduate seminars in Tokyo Metropolitan University, an institution where I was not enrolled. Participating in his courses changed my life and shaped my professional career. I would later learn that his response to my note was typical of the generous personal interest Professor Chiba took in students generally and helps to explain the influence he has had on generations of scholars in Japan and elsewhere.

Professor Chiba was a man of compassion and simplicity, which were personal traits that he had first cultivated at an early age under the tutelage of Kenzo Awa, a renowned grand master of the Japanese art of archery (Kyu-do). Awa taught that, contrary to the western sport of archery, it made no difference whether the arrow met the target or not. What really matters is to learn how, in the Zen Buddhist mode of “nothingness (Mu),” the spirit, the body, the technique and the art are a single entity. One must put all one’s capability into an arrow and, in this sense, learning to launch an arrow is itself a lifelong journey to cultivate one’s mind and to come to grasp the nature of a human being. Chiba-sensei sought to apply Awa’s philosophy to the development of his own scholarly and personal orientation.

Professor Chiba was one of the few scholars in those days who took the need seriously to deliver their research and findings internationally. I remember well that Professor Chiba strongly recommended that I not merely “import” things from foreign countries but become more actively engaged with “exporting” my own work by writing articles more frequently in English. He urged the importance of making contact with authors of English articles we admired, and he advised that this could be done merely by writing a letter to them to obtain permission to cite their articles. This felt need to reach across geographical and linguistic borders is clearly reflected in the books he wrote in English, such as: Legal Pluralism: Toward a General Theory through Japanese Legal Culture, Tokai University Press, 1989; Asian Indigenous Law: In Interaction With Received Law, Kegan Paul Intl, 1987; and Legal Cultures in Human Society, Shinzan-sha, 2002.

These unusual yet determined efforts to write in English made his work well recognized in the international community. He was himself active for many years in the work of the Research Committee for the Sociology of Law and organised its 1975 Congress in Hakone. He had close links with the Oñati Institute and was one of the keynote speakers at its inauguration in 1989. In 2000, a volume was published in tribute to Chiba’s personal and scholarly achievements: Une introduction aux cultures juridiques non occidentals: Autour de Masaji Chiba (sous la direction de Capeller and Kitamura), Bruylant (Bruxelles). Through his many involvements with American and European scholars, Chiba became a mediator in the law and society field between Japan and other countries.

When I became a graduate student, each class Professor Chiba taught was an extraordinary forum bringing together students from all over Japan, drawn from other universities and from disciplines other than legal studies, such as anthropology and sociology. He made every effort to nurture new generations of researchers in the sociology of law and the anthropology of law. His concern for younger researchers and students was deep and genuine. I remember one particularly touching example of his personal generosity. A few days before I left Japan to study abroad for a year, Professor Chiba gave me a farewell present to supplement my modest funds. I learned some years later, that the money he gave me was a sum he had been saving to buy new curtains for his wife and himself. To this day, the curtains hanging in their home are still the old ones that he was never able to replace. This same love and concern for the younger generations of researchers was what motivated him to make a generous donation at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law (IISL) in Onati, Spain, to establish the unique “Chiba Fund” to support academic studies of nonwestern law, including indigenous law, among western peoples, and studies by nonwestern young scholars.

Thus, Professor Chiba mediated between different cultures in several important ways. First, he was an eminent scholar who established the groundwork for a systematic development of legal anthropology in Japan and who had a profound and lasting influence on law and society studies, particularly emphasizing the cultural and symbolic aspects of law. In addition, he strongly urged a generation of students to transcend the cultural and organizational boundaries of disciplines and methods and to engage in international scholarly networks. Furthermore, Professor Chiba made a great effort to mediate between law and different fields of study. Evidence of his continual attempt to link law to other subject areas includes a number of works written in Japanese, such as An Introduction to Sports Law (2001) and Law and Time (2003).

During the last decade in Japan, we have witnessed a renewed strong interest among scholars of legal philosophy and anthropology in the work of Professor Chiba, and also a further development of research based upon his work. Professor Chiba, as an eminent scholar and a warm-hearted and broad-minded mediator of different cultures, must have been deeply gratified to see this trend. He will continue to be remembered by successive generations of students, and those of us who owe him a profound intellectual as well as a personal debt will miss him tremendously.


Funding Opportunities

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s (RWJF) Public Health Law Research (PHLR) program has issued a second  call for proposals (CFP) for studies that will examine the public health impacts of laws and legal practices, including innovative  policy and legal approaches, and laws and regulations developed at the city or county level. 

The new call for proposals is available at http://www.publichealthlawresearch.org/. The deadline for submitting brief proposals is April 14, 2010. 

Up to $3.5 million is available in this round of funding.  Short-term studies will be funded up to $150,000 each for up to 18 months. Complex studies will be funded up to $450,000 each for up to 30 months.  

While PHLR funds studies that mainly focus on the intersection between law and public health, researchers from other disciplines, such as medicine, economics, sociology, psychology, and public policy and administration are encouraged to be part of multi-disciplinary teams of applicants.  

PHLR’s first call for proposals was issued in 2009.  Fourteen studies were funded that addressed a wide range of legal and public health issues, including: effective legal decision-making during public health emergencies; issues related to the public health infrastructure at the state and local levels; the influence of zoning laws on violent crime and health, and the impact of exemptions from immunization laws on diseases that can be prevented through vaccines. 

Scott Burris, J.D., professor of law and director of the Center for Health Law, Policy and Practice at Temple University, directs the national program office for PHLR. 

“We want to encourage studies that focus on timely, current public health and legal issues. PHLR emphasizes scientific rigor as well as policy, legal and public health relevancy,” Burris said. 

Last year, PHLR received 235 brief proposals, out of which 40 were invited to submit full proposals, and 14 were funded, according to Burris. The new CFP is expected to generate similar levels of interest. Applicants to the new CFP will have access to methodology and other technical resources on the PHLR Web site (http://www.publichealthlawresearch.org/).

Michelle Larkin, J.D., director of RWJF’s public health team said “the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation recognizes that good health not only comes from the care that people receive at their doctor’s office or at hospitals, but also from programs, laws and  policies that remove barriers to health and help people make healthier decisions. We established the Public Health Law Research program to inform policymakers about the impact of laws on public health.”

The PHLR national program office includes: Jennifer Ibrahim, Ph.D., M.P.H., M.A., and Jennifer Wood, Ph.D., M.A., both from Temple University; Michelle Mello, Ph.D., J.D., M.Phil., Harvard University; Jeffrey Swanson, Ph.D., M.A., M.Phil., Duke University; and Alexander Wagenaar, Ph.D., M.S.W., University of Florida.  The proposal review process includes RWJF staff and a National Advisory Committee, chaired by Susan Gerard, MBA, a former state legislator and a public health official from Arizona.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation focuses on the pressing health and health care issues facing our country. As the nation's largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to improving the health and health care of all Americans, the Foundation works with a diverse group of organizations and individuals to identify solutions and achieve comprehensive, meaningful and timely change.  For more than 35 years the Foundation has brought experience, commitment, and a rigorous, balanced approach to the problems that affect the health and health care of those it serves. When it comes to helping Americans lead healthier lives and get the care they need, the Foundation expects to make a difference in your lifetime. For more information, visit www.rwjf.org. 


Conferences & Workshops

Socializing Economic Relationships - New Perspectives and Methods for Analysing Transnational Risk Regulation will be held April 15-1, 2010 at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford University, United Kingdom. This SLSA supported international workshop – co-coordinated by Bettina Lange, Oxford University and Dania Thomas, Keele University – picks up on three key strands of Karl Polanyi’s work. In the early 1940’s he set out in his book The Great Transformation’ a powerful critique of market liberalism and its belief in the self-regulation of economic activity both in a national and global context.

This critique is highly relevant to thinking about new approaches to legal regulation, also in the context of the current financial crisis.

The workshop will address in particular three sets of questions:

  • whether and how economic relationships can and should be embedded in social relations.

  • how markets can be regulated by private actors - a theme less explored in Polanyi’s work.

  • whether global economic and social interdependencies promote or hinder the embedding of economic in social relationships. 

The workshop also seeks to stimulate debate about methodologies for analysing transnational risk regulation. Key concepts central to the analysis of risk regulation in a national context, such as the state, state law and societies bounded by a nation state, are potentially less significant for understanding transnational risk regulation. How do lawyers, political scientists, criminologists, sociologists and economists respond methodologically to the decline of the nation state as a major theoretical and empirical reference point for understanding risk regulation?

Themes for panels include: ‘Gendering Regulation’, ‘Corporate Governance: The Relevance of Identity, Culture and Community’, ‘International Finance: Relocating the “Social”’, ‘Civil Society Actors and  Transnational Risk Regulation: The Challenge of Accountability’, and ‘Emotions and Regulation’.

To book your place at this workshop please e-mail Bettina Lange, at: Bettina.lange@csls.ox.ac.uk. The fee for participants at the workshop who do not present a paper is £185. This covers the cost of one night stay in new purpose built accommodation at Lady Margaret Hall College, Oxford University. The College is a 20 minute walk away from the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies and located at the edge of Oxford University Park. The conference fee of £ 185 also includes the 3 course conference dinner with wine or soft drinks and 2 lunches as well as tea/coffee during morning and afternoon breaks. We regret that we cannot fund travel costs.

Participation of postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers is supported through 3 workshop bursaries. These bursaries will be allocated on a ‘first come – first served’ basis. Informal applications should be addressed to Bettina Lange (Bettina.Lange@csls.ox.ac.uk) and contain a signed statement from the Head of Department confirming that the researcher is a doctoral or postdoctoral candidate at the institution and that the institution can not fund the cost of the workshop. Postgraduate or postdoctoral participants will have to fund their own travel.

If you wish to present a paper, please contact Bettina Lange (Bettina.Lange@csls.ox.ac.uk) or Dania Thomas (d.thomas@keele.ac.uk)

* * * * *

The Symposium on Crime and Justice: The Past and Future of Empirical Sentencing Research will be held September 23 & 24, 2010 at the University at Albany in Albany, NY, USA. The Symposium Director is Shawn Bushway. A top-flight group of scholars will assemble to review the current state of sentencing research and chart future directions.

MAIN PAPERS include:

The Role of Race in Sentencing Outcomes - Eric Baumer, The Florida State University

Risk Assessment in Sentencing - Kelly Hannah-Moffat, University of Toronto

Discretion and Decision Making in the Sentencing Process - Shawn Bushway, University at Albany and Brian Forst, American University

Managing the Criminal Justice Population - Bill Sabol, Bureau of Justice Statistics

The schedule also features a distinguished panel of session chairs and discussants.

Registration: General - $125.00; Student - $75.00; Reception and Dinner: General - $40.00; Student - $25.00.

For Students and Young Faculty: Available Scholarships - Research Poster Session - Young Scholar Paper Competition.

Visit www.albany.edu/scj/SentencingSymposium.htm for additional information. This event is made possible in large part by a grant from the National Science Foundation (SES-0939099).

* * * * *

The Japan Federation of Criminological Associations (JFCA) cordially welcomes you to participate in the forthcoming 16th World Congress of the International Society for Criminology to be held August 5-9, 2011 in Kobe, Japan.  The general theme of the Congress is “Global Socio-Economic Crisis and Crime Control Policies: Regional and National Comparison”.  Four sub-themes are set to be examined in the plenary sessions, in which internationally recognized experts are invited to make presentations:

1. Global Economic Crisis and Criminology

2. Models of State and Crime Prevention Strategies

3. Corporate and Business Crime

4. Frontiers of Clinical Criminology

Paper sessions, roundtable sessions and poster sessions are provided.  For paper sessions, we accept both individual papers and proposals for complete sessions.   We are now calling for submissions.  For details, please visit our site:  http://wcon2011.com/.   On-line submission, registration, hotel, and tour bookings will commence on August 1, 2010. Please plan ahead to attend this important event for the world community of criminologists. Download the First Circular.

Inquiries: Congress Secretariat (att: Ms.Osawa/Sakagami), TTS Center 3F, 1-4-4 Mikuriya-sakaemachi, Higashi-osaka, OSAKA 577-0036 JAPAN. Tel:+81(0)6-6618-4323. Fax:+81(0)6-6781-8883.  E-Mail: wcon@oucow.daishodai.ac.jp

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Symposium on Comparative Early Modern Legal History: New Perspectives on Legal Pluralism, Friday, April 23, 2010, Newberry Library, Chicago. Organized by: Lauren Benton (NYU History) and Richard J. Ross (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Colonialism enhanced legal pluralism.  European, African, Asian, and American polities relied on layered and multi-centric systems of law, and their encounters generated new and often repeating patterns of jurisdictional politics.  This widespread legal pluralism at times contributed to regional integration by making substantively different legal systems intelligible to travelers and merchants.  It also posed challenges to imperial administration as subordinate authorities sought to establish, expand, or protect prerogatives to act independently of metropolitan sovereigns and courts.  With recent scholarship establishing clearly the benefits of framing colonial law as jurisdictionally complex and unstable, opportunities are now in sight to push this perspective further in a number of directions. 

One interesting set of problems involves questions about how conflicts over the prerogatives of delegated legal authorities to discipline and control subordinate or dependent populations related to the changing contours of imperial constitutions or ideologies of rule.  Conference participants may explore the ways in which such figures as garrison commanders, plantation owners, ship captains, Company officials, missionaries, and others with some measure of legal authority positioned themselves in relation to both metropolitan and colonial law.  Did they make innovative legal claims or exert influence on regional patterns?  We invite investigations of the conditions under which such actors deferred to imperial authority, the sources they drew upon to defend their legal prerogatives, and the nature of their interactions with various courts.  Other studies might consider the degree to which the politics of making and defending claims to semi-autonomous legal authority informed broader, even regional, political processes.  As we bring such connections into sight, it may be possible to refine comparisons of the politics of legal pluralism in different parts of a colonial regime, or between the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Indian Ocean worlds. 

A related theme focuses on the legal strategies of subordinate groups.  Taking into account a framework of legal pluralism, scholars can move beyond the study of “resistance” to ask questions about the legal participation of formally subordinate groups—even some that were seemingly powerless before the law.  Forum shopping, petitions for mercy, violence against magistrates, new genres of legal writing, maneuvers to escape indebtedness—these and other strategies had immediate and sometimes far-reaching institutional effects.  In addition to tracing such connections, we might probe the formative influences on legal strategies.  How did knowledge about law circulate?  To what extent did information or stories about of the effectiveness of particular legal strategies carry across social strata, imperial divides, and oceans?  How did legal actors imagine and describe plural legal orders?  With attention to these and other, related topics, the conference seeks to open the study of legal pluralism to new approaches and insights. 

Lauren Benton (NYU History) and Richard Ross (Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Law and History) organized “New Perspectives on Legal Pluralism.”  The conference is an offering of the Symposium on Comparative Early Modern Legal History, which gathers yearly under the auspices of the Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry Library in Chicago in order to explore a particular topic in the comparative legal history of the Atlantic world in the period c.1492-1815.  Funding has been provided by the University of Illinois College of Law. 

Attendance at the Symposium is free and open to the public.  Participants and attendees should preregister by contacting the Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry Library at renaissance@newberry.org or at 312-255-3514.   For information about the conference, please consult our website at www.newberry.org/renaissance/seminars/legal.html  or contact Prof. Richard Ross at Rjross@illinois.edu or at 217-244-7890. 

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Lawyers in Practice: Ethical Decision Making in Context. Hosted by the Baldy Center for Law & Social Policy in Buffalo NY, and co-sponsored by the University of Connecticut, this one-day conference will address the following: How do lawyers resolve ethical problems in the everyday context of law practice? What issues commonly emerge in different practice specialties and what are the norms and rules for resolving them? This is the first conference that focuses on the empirical research on lawyers’ work and their actual decision making in a wide variety of practice contexts. Participants will examine the work of lawyers in a number of practice areas, identifying one or more ethical issues that arise in the practice area. Scholars will present their research, embedding lawyers’ decision making in both the professional world of ethical codes and the social and economic setting of the workplace. When: Friday, April 23, 2010 (8am-5pm); Where: University at Buffalo Law School (North Campus), 509 O’Brian Hall; Details: http://law.buffalo.edu/baldycenter/; Email: Lmather@buffalo.edu or Leslie.Levin@law.uconn.edu; Registration: BaldyRSVP@buffalo.edu

 


Prizes

Entries will be accepted through July 1, 2010, for the 2010 Chicago-Kent College of Law/Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize. Eligible books and articles should focus on the tension between civil liberties and national security.

Established in 2007 at Chicago-Kent College of Law by alumnus Roy C. Palmer and his wife, Susan M. Palmer, the prize honors a work of scholarship that explores the tension between civil liberties and national security in contemporary American society. The $10,000 prize is designed to encourage and reward public debate among scholars on current issues affecting the rights of individuals and the responsibilities of governments throughout the world.   Articles or books submitted to the competition must be in draft form or have been published within the six months prior to the July 1 deadline. As a condition of accepting the award, the winner will present his or her work at Chicago-Kent. All reasonable expenses will be paid. Presidential Constitutionalism in Perilous Times (Harvard University Press, 2009) by University of Utah professor Scott M. Matheson, Jr., won the 2009 Chicago-Kent College of Law/Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize. The 2008 Palmer Prize was awarded to Bad Advice: The President’s Lawyers in the War on Terrorism (University Press of Kansas, 2009) by Professor Harold H. Bruff of the University of Colorado at Boulder Law School. The inaugural prize, awarded in 2007, went to constitutional scholars David D. Cole and Jules L. Lobel for their book Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror (The New Press, 2007).

Eligible books and articles should be submitted to Tasha Kincade, assistant to Dean Harold J. Krent, at tkincade@kentlaw.edu or Chicago-Kent College of Law, 565 West Adams Street, Chicago, IL 60661-3691.



Calls for Papers

The Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice invites submissions for a special issue to be published in August, 2011 – Between Black and White:  Theorizing Racial Democracy, Crime and Justice, edited by María Vélez, Rod Brunson and Jody Miller.

We seek manuscripts on a variety of topics within this broad area, with the goal of showcasing theoretically grounded research that investigates the connections between race, crime and justice that go beyond the black/white divide typical of research in criminology and criminal justice.  This includes, for example, research that considers the experiences of racial and ethnic groups typically excluded from criminological research, and research that considers the intersections of race with class and gender.  We also welcome theoretical pieces, and seek to include submissions from diverse methodological approaches. The inquiries about the appropriateness of topics can be directed to the special issue editors.  All manuscripts will be peer reviewed.  They should be no more than 30 typed double-spaced pages, including tables, figures, and references.  Manuscripts must be received no later than October 1, 2010.  Please send two electronic copies of the manuscript (one complete version with a cover page and one blind copy with all identifying information removed) to María B. Vélez at mvelez@unm.edu.  Guidelines for authors and additional information are available at: http://ccj.sagepub.com.

* * *

The JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES invites submissions focused on PROFESSIONS AND INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE. Guest Editors: Daniel Muzio (University of Leeds), David Brock (Ben-Gurion University) and Roy Suddaby (University of Alberta)

There is a growing awareness of the critical role that professions play in advanced economies. Professionals and professional service firms are key advisors, analysts, defenders and developers of the major institutions that underpin capitalist economies. As gatekeepers to key financial institutions, the professions influence both the success and failure of capital markets Professional service firms are also powerful economic actors in their own right, contributing over 3 trillion (USD) to the global economy. Professions influence more than the market system, however. They are also key agents of social change. As Scott (2008: 219) observes, “the professions in modern society have assumed leading roles in the creation and tending of institutions. They are the preeminent institutional agents of our time.”

Professions are, themselves, institutions which, over the last thirty years, have experienced profound changes. Professional service firms are increasingly adopting both the logic and structures of business corporations (Brock, et al., 1999). Professional identities are increasingly framed around logics of efficiency and commerce which have displaced traditional logics of ethics (Brint, 1994). Professional firms now tend to be multidisciplinary and transnational; a development which is eroding the value of traditional self-regulatory regimes and making the professional service firm the primary site of professional control and regulation (Cooper & Robson, 2006).

While we understand that professions are both key mechanisms for, and primary targets of institutional change, the precise role of professions and professional service firms in processes of institutional change remain under-theorized (Hwang & Powell, 2009; Scott, 2008). In this Call for Papers we propose a substantial re-theorization and empirical re-examination of professions and professional service firms and their relationship to the dynamics of institutional change.

Theoretically we seek papers that focus on the institutional work (Lawrence, et al., 2009) of professions in the context of business and the capital market system. Specifically, we are interested in research that theorizes the role of professionals and professional service firms in creating, maintaining and changing key societal institutions. We thus encourage submissions that focus on, but are not limited to:

  • The role of professionals and professional service firms in creating, maintaining or changing key institutions within capital markets

  • The role of professionals and professional service firms in creating, maintaining or changing key institutions within government and society

  • The changing social, normative and ethical role of professionals and professional service firms

  • The role of professionals and professional service firms in the diffusion of institutional logics

  • Changes in status, identity, function and role of professionals embedded in corporations as in-house professionals (i.e. in-house lawyers, consultants, internal accountants etc.)

  • The emergence of new forms of business professions and professional service firms  

Empirically, we seek papers that document and analyse how broader institutional changes have impacted on professional services firms and their activities. We thus encourage submissions that focus on, but are not limited to:

  • Changes in the structure and organizational design of professional service firms (including multidisciplinary firms, publicly traded professional firms and transnational professional firms)

  • The emergence and role of new managerial practices within professional occupations and professional service firms

  • Emerging networks of professionals and professional firms (including alumni networks and global professional firm networks)

  • Changes in the nature of professional work (such as the off-shoring professional services and the impact of new technologies)

  • Changes in professional identities as a result of the increasingly organizational context of professional work

  • Changes in the status and perception of professionals as a consequence of the increasing deregulation and fragmentation of the professions

  • Changes in the power relationship between professions and clients

While much recent research has focused on traditional business professions (consultants, lawyers and accountants) we also encourage studies of professionals and professions that have received somewhat less analytic attention – such as engineering, health care, information technology and lobbying. We also encourage studies that examine multiple professions or the field as a whole.

We also encourage papers that challenge the assumptions of this Call for Papers – i.e. papers that question the extent of change in professional service firms, their role as agents of institutional change or the relevance of professionals and professional service firms as a managerial construct.

Papers may take varying methods and approaches: conceptual, theory building, meta-analytical and empirical. Recognizing the multidisciplinary nature of this area, submissions may draw on history, geography, political theory, sociology, economics and organization theory.

Procedure: Submissions should be prepared in accordance with the JMS Style Guide for Authors: see http://www.wiley.com/bw/submit.asp?ref=0022-2380. Manuscripts should be electronically submitted by e-mail to professions.special.issue@googlemail.com. The deadline for submissions is December 31, 2010. Papers will be reviewed by the guest editors as soon as they are received and, if suitable for the special issue, immediately entered into double-blind review processes in accordance with JMS standard procedures. Please direct any questions regarding this Special Issue to the guest editors Daniel Muzio at dm@lubs.leeds.ac.uk, David Brock at dmb@bgu.ac.il, or Roy Suddaby at roy.suddaby@ualberta.ca.

References

Brint, S. (1994). In the age of experts: The changing role of professionals in politics and public life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Brock, D.M., M. Powell, and C.R. Hinings, (eds) (1999). Restructuring the professional organization: Accounting, health care and law. London: Routledge.

Cooper, D.J. and K. Robson (2006). Accounting, professions and regulation: locating the sites of professionalization, Accounting Organizations and Society 31: 415–444.

Hwang, H. and W.W. Powell. (2009). The Rationalization of Charity: The influences of professionalism in the non-profit sector. Administrative Science Quarterly, 54(2): 268-298.

Lawrence, T.B., R. Suddaby and B. Leca. (2009). Institutional work: Actors and agency in institutional studies of organization. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Scott, W.R. (2008). Lords on the Dance: Professionals as institutional agents. Organization Studies, 29: 219-238.




Fellowships

IREX is pleased to announce 2010-2011 competition for the US Embassy Policy Specialist (EPS) Program. EPS provides fellowships to US scholars and professionals for up to eight weeks to serve US Embassies in Eurasia as policy specialists on a chosen topic and pursue their own research project independently. EPS Grant covers the cost of travel and in-country housing and provides a stipend for living expenses. The EPS application and instructions are available on the IREX website: http://www.irex.org/programs/us_scholars/uss_info.asp

Completed applications are due no later than March 15, 2010

Scholars and Professionals with advanced degrees (PhD, MA, MS, MFA, MBA, MPA, MLIS, MPH, JD, MD) and US citizenship or permanent residency are eligible to apply for the EPS Program.

Questions may be addressed to the EPS Program Staff at eps@irex.org or by telephone at 202-628-8188. EPS is funded by the United States Department of State Title VIII Program.



Positions

Two Positions at The University of Ontario Institute of Technology Faculty of Criminology, Justice and Policy Studies:

The Faculty of Criminology, Justice and Policy Studies is accepting applications for a tenure-track position at the rank of assistant/associate professor in the field of human rights and the law commencing July 1, 2010. The successful applicant will, at the time of appointment, hold a Ph.D. in any area pertaining to Human Rights (Law, Conflict Resolution, Crime and Justice, Development, Philosophy, History, or Political Science) and that is relevant to social science. Candidates may have an active research agenda in any area of human rights, such as civil and political rights, social and economic rights, or other emerging areas of human rights in comparative, international, or Canadian contexts.  We are particularly interested in a candidate who can contribute to the establishment and growth of the Faculty’s Legal Studies program. The faculty member will be expected to: conduct research; teach undergraduate courses at all levels; provide student advisement; and participate fully in the life of the Faculty and the University. Applicants with innovative areas of research are encouraged to apply.  This position is pending budgetary approval.

The Faculty of Criminology, Justice and Policy Studies offers Honours Bachelor of Arts degrees in Communication, Criminology and Justice Studies, Legal Studies, Public Policy, and a Masters of Arts (MA)  in Criminology. The ability to teach core areas such as legal theory, diversity and law, law and social change, or women in conflict with the law would also be considered an asset. Refer to http://www.criminologyandjustice.uoit.ca/ for more information about the Faculty.

Review of applications will begin on March 1, 2010 and will continue until the position is filled. Send electronically a formal letter of application, curriculum vitae, a statement of teaching philosophy and interests, an outline of present and future research agenda, and the names of three referees  to: careers@uoit.ca  Please indicate the competition number UOIT09-79 in the subject line of the e-mail. Please ensure that letters from referees that are sent separately also have the competition number stated in the email subject line.

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The Faculty of Criminology, Justice and Policy Studies is accepting applications for a tenure-track position at the rank of assistant/associate professor in the field of human rights and the law commencing July 1, 2010. The successful applicant will hold a Ph.D. in any area pertaining to legal studies, including law and society, law and justice, or jurisprudence that is relevant to social science. Candidates may have an active research agenda in any area related to legal studies, such as family law, labour and employment law, law and social policy, feminist legal studies, social welfare law, and access to justice. We are particularly interested in a candidate who can contribute to the establishment and growth of the Faculty’s Legal Studies program. The faculty member will be expected to: conduct research; teach undergraduate courses at all levels; provide student advisement; and participate fully in the life of the Faculty and the University. Applicants with innovative areas of research are encouraged to apply.  This position is pending budgetary approval.

The Faculty of Criminology, Justice and Policy Studies offers Honours Bachelor of Arts degrees in Communication, Criminology and Justice Studies, Legal Studies, Public Policy, and a Masters of Arts (MA)  in Criminology. The ability to teach core areas such as legal theory, diversity and law, law and social change, or women in conflict with the law would also be considered an asset. Refer to http://www.criminologyandjustice.uoit.ca/ for more information about the Faculty. 

Review of applications will begin on  April 5, 2010 and will continue until the position is filled. Send electronically a formal letter of application, curriculum vitae, a statement of teaching philosophy and interests, and an outline of present and future research agenda, and the names of three referees to: careers@uoit.ca  Please indicate the competition number (UOIT10-05) in the subject line of the e-mail. Please ensure that letters from referees that are sent separately also have the competition number stated in the email subject line.

UOIT opened in September, 2003.  Our educational philosophy has a 21st-century vision of teaching and learning that challenges, encourages innovation, and connects faculty, students and community, while respecting the best practices and traditions of Canada’s established universities.

The members of the Faculty have distinguished national and international reputations as researchers committed to high-quality research. They conduct collaborative research within the faculty, with other faculties, with other universities, and in the local and greater Toronto communities.

The University of Ontario Institute of Technology is strongly committed to diversity within its community, and welcomes applications from qualified visible minority group members, Aboriginal persons, persons with disabilities, members of sexual minority groups, and others who may contribute to further the diversification of ideas. The University of Ontario Institute of Technology is located in a region experiencing one of the highest growth rates both in Canada and globally.  UOIT also offers the opportunity to teach, conduct research and live near one of the most diverse cities in the world, Toronto. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority.

We invite you to consider joining the University of Ontario Institute of Technology’s (UOIT) globally trained faculty as we further our reputation as a leading learning environment that delivers innovative research. UOIT is committed to a technology-enhanced Mobile Learning environment in which every student uses a laptop computer and all faculty members teach using a laptop computer.  


2009 Contributors to LSA's Prizes and Funds

The following individuals are to be given special thanks for their 2009 contributions and donations to the Association and its prize funds. Their generosity benefits the Association and the field of law and society.

Gregory S. Alexander

Penelope E. Andrews

David C. Baldus

Susan A. Bandes

Taunya L. Banks

Brian H. Bornstein

Lyndsay Campbell

Cinnamon Carlarne

Marcia Chambers

Elizabeth Chambliss

Kay-Wah Chan

John Comaroff

Rosemary J. Coombe

Michelle Cottier

Eve Darian-Smith

Shari S. Diamond

Robert Dingwall

Seyed Reza Eftekhari

Mairead Enright

Rose Ernst

Wendy Espeland

Patricia Ewick

Lawrence M. Friedman

Marc Galanter

Manuel A. Gómez

Robert W. Gordon

Samuel R. Gross

Catherine M. Grosso

Maria A. Gurrola

Keith Guzik

Lisa Hajjar

Terence C. Halliday

Joel F. Handler

Valerie P. Hans

Christine B. Harrington

Beth Harris

Tetty Havinga

John P. Heinz

William D. Henderson

Susan F. Hirsch

Pamela Hobbs

Elizabeth Holzer

Siyed Masoud Jalilian

Tatjana Jovanic

Robert A. Kagan

Susanne Karstedt

Mark Kessler

Manako Kinoshita

Jonathan Klaaren

Felicia Kornbluh

Herbert M. Kritzer

Mindie Lazarus-Black

Philip S.C. Lewis

Ann M. Lucas

Mona Lynch

Stewart Macaulay

Patricia MacCorquodale

Anna-Maria Marshall

Jonathan Marshall

Stephen Mastrofski

Lynn Mather

Andrea McArdle

Michael W. McCann

Ajay K. Mehrotra

Setsuo Miyazawa

Amir Najafi

Angela Narasimhan

Laura Beth Nielsen

Julie Novkov

Ana Maria Nusdeo

Susan M. Olson

Robert N. Parker

Roel Pieterman

Ronald M. Pipkin

Konstanze Plett

S. Norooz Pour

D. Marie Provine

Carmen Luisa R. De Roche

Klaus F. Roehl

Mary Romero

Mary R. Rose

Lucy E. Salyer

Stuart Scheingold

Kim Lane Scheppele

Vicki Schultz

Corey S. Shdaimah

Susan S. Silbey

Carole Silver

Jonathan S. Simon

Lawrence Solan

Margaret Somers

Susan Sterett

Mark C. Suchman

Veronica Taylor

David M. Trubek

Louise G. Trubek

Charles Venator Santiago

Adelaide H. Villmoare

Joanna K. Weinberg

Mark S. Weiner

Yale Law School

Peter C. Yeager

Jung Young Hoa