Elizabeth Mertz

Elizabeth Mertz headshot

Research Professor

750 N. Lake Shore Drive
4th Floor
Chicago, IL 60611

Joint appointment

John and Rylla Bosshard Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin

Education

Ph.D., Anthropology, Duke University; J.D., Northwestern University School of Law

Bio

Elizabeth Mertz is a legal anthropologist who studies legal language in the United States, with a special focus on law school education. Her research also examines the problems involved in…

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Research focus

Language and law, legal education, interdisciplinary translation, family law. Research focuses on the intersection of law and language, combining anthropological and legal perspectives. Empirical research at the ABF has centered on legal education. The first study, which was also funded by the Spencer Foundation, provided the most extensive observational data available to date on first-year law school teaching. The current project, funded by the ABF and the Law School Admission Council, examines the post-tenure experiences of law professors. Other research has addressed the process by which law translates the social world around it in a number of additional settings.

Projects

The New Legal Realism: Latest finding: Feb 8, 2008, with University of Wisconsin Institute for Legal Studies, Emory University School of Law; Lawyers and law professors frequently draw on social science, and there are many social scientists who devote their careers to studying legal institutions and processes. Yet despite their apparent…
Senior Status in the Legal Academy: Latest finding: Jan 23, 2008, with Wamucii Njogu , Carol Greenhouse; This is the first national study examining the post-tenure experiences of law professors in the United States. Tenured law professors shape many aspects of the institutional settings within law…

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