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Current projects

Civil justice

Building on the Arizona Filming Project
Authors: Shari Seidman Diamond, Mary R. Rose, Updated Sep 10, 2008
A variety of studies have been conducted based upon the deliberations of jurors in the 50 civil trials in the Arizona Filming Project. Ongoing studies are focusing on how juries handle comparative…
The Legal Complex and Struggles for Political Liberalism
Author: Terence Halliday, Updated May 7, 2008
Understanding the foundations of political liberalism has become one of most critical issues of the past fifteen years. Countries that are not democracies or that are in transition face global…
Public Interest Law Firms
Authors: Laura Beth Nielsen, Catherine R. Albiston, Updated Feb 21, 2008
Using a multi-method research design, this project investigates how lawyers in public interest law organizations (PILOs) conceptualize and pursue their goals. At the organizational level of analysis,…
The Social Psychological Role of Subjective Harm in Punishment
Authors: Janice Nadler, Mary R. Rose, Updated Jan 23, 2008
This research investigates the factors that play a psychological role in laypersons’ decisions about justice and responsibility. In criminal cases jurors sometimes hear, by way of victim impact…
Expressive Law
Authors: Janice Nadler, Richard McAdams, Updated Jan 23, 2008
This project seeks to understand empirically the effects that law has apart from sanctions that it imposes. It tests experimentally the theory that law influences behavior in coordination games with…
Condemn-Nation: The Social Psychological Foundations of the Kelo Backlash
Authors: Shari Seidman Diamond, Janice Nadler, Updated Jan 23, 2008
This project seeks to understand and explain the extreme public reaction to the Kelo case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that governments are permitted to force the sale of private property…
Public Opinion and the Civil Justice System
Author: Stephen Daniels, Updated Jan 22, 2008
What do people think of the civil justice system? This project seeks to answer that question against the backdrop of the politics of tort reform and the changes in the law that have resulted from the…
It's Deja Vu All Over Again: Plaintiff's Lawyers and the Evolution of Tort Law and Practice in Texas
Authors: Stephen Daniels, Joanne Martin, Updated Jan 22, 2008
This project is examining the effects of tort reform on plaintiffs’ lawyers’ practices through a study of the impact of a series of major tort reforms recently enacted in Texas.…

Criminal justice

Parental Incarceration and Intergenerational Social Exclusion: “The Long Arm of the Law”
Authors: John Hagan, Holly Foster, Updated Jan 23, 2008
This study is designed to better understand the difference that parental incarceration makes in the life of an adolescent. American incarceration is four times larger than in the 1970s, six to ten…
Explaining Death and Atrocity in Darfur
Authors: John Hagan, Alberto Palloni, Updated Jan 23, 2008
Drawing on a unique set of data - interviews with refugees - this project is examining empirically the claims of genocide in the Darfur region of the Sudan. It will provide an objective and…
Popular Justice, Communal Violence, and Alternative Policing in the New South Africa (2004-2008)
Authors: John Comaroff, Jean Comaroff, Updated Jan 22, 2008
South Africa is currently beset by so-called “vigilantism,” a term that covers a range of different kinds of “alternative” policing, retributive violence, and popular justice,…

Law and globalization

Globalization of Law and Markets
Author: Terence Halliday, Updated Sep 13, 2008
This project on the globalization of bankruptcy law has produced a book (Law’s Global Markets) and many articles and book chapters. Law’s Global Markets (forthcoming, Stanford University…
Globalization of Law and Basic Legal Freedoms
Author: Terence Halliday, Updated Sep 5, 2008
Across the world basic legal freedoms are being fought for, consolidated, and defended. That is the case for nations that have never enjoyed those freedoms, for nations that have advanced towards and…
World Justice Project
Author: James J. Heckman, Updated Apr 23, 2008
The World Justice Project, sponsored by the American Bar Association, seeks to broaden and institutionalize the network of organizations and individuals committed to advancing the rule of law. The…
The Legal Transformation of Medicine: How Rules Work in the International World of HIV/AIDS
Author: Carol A. Heimer, Updated Jan 23, 2008
This book project braids together investigations of three transformative events - the “legalization” and internationalization of medicine and the advent of HIV/AIDS - in a study of how…
International Strategies, Law, and the Reconstruction of Asian States
Authors: Bryant G. Garth, Yves Desalay, Updated Jan 23, 2008
Lawyers and the Construction of the Rule of Law: National and Transnational Processes
Authors: Bryant G. Garth, Yves Dezalay, Updated Jan 23, 2008

Legal history

The Cambridge History of Law in America
Authors: Christopher L. Tomlins, Michael Grossberg, Updated May 17, 2008
In 2001, the American Bar Foundation pledged resources to support the production of a multi-volume, multi-contributor history of law in America to be published by Cambridge University Press. The…
Law, Work and Culture in Early America (1600-1800)
Author: Christopher L. Tomlins, Updated May 17, 2008
This research has been examining the legal history of work and labor during the first two centuries of American history. It has been pursued in two phases. Initially it concentrated on the…
Suing Henry Ford: America's First Hate Speech Case
Author: Victoria Saker Woeste, Updated May 15, 2008
This ongoing project examines a well-known event in the life of Henry Ford -- a 1927 federal libel lawsuit against him and his antisemitic newspaper -- from the perspective of the people who sought…
The New Legal Realism
Authors: Elizabeth Mertz, University of Wisconsin Institute for Legal Studies, Emory University School of Law, Updated Feb 8, 2008
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…
Legacies of Slavery in Early-twentieth-century Gold Coast Africa
Author: Dylan C. Penningroth, Updated Jan 24, 2008
The histories of Ghana and the U.S. South during the nineteenth century were significantly shaped by debates about the claims that slaves and their descendants made to kinship and to the products of…
Law and Everyday Life among Black Southerners
Author: Dylan C. Penningroth, Updated Jan 24, 2008
This study focuses on husband-wife relations, the rise of the independent black church, migration, and the interaction between legal categories and popular conceptions such as respectability and…
The People's Government: Law and the Creation of a Modern American State, 1877-1932
Author: William J. Novak, Updated Jan 24, 2008
This project is the second installment in a more long term effort to write a legal history of the American State and Police Power from the American Revolution to the present. The first segment of…

Legal profession

Early Post-Law School Careers of Women and Men Lawyers in U.S. and German Cities
Authors: John Hagan, Gabriele Plickert, Patricia Parker, Hans Merkens, Updated Nov 26, 2008
This research is expanding a national U.S. study of lawyers (the American Bar Foundation’s After the JD study) to include two cities in Germany - Frankfurt and Berlin. This will be a…
Urban Lawyers: The New Social Structure of the Bar
Authors: John P. Heinz, Robert L. Nelson, John P. Heinz, Robert L. Nelson, Rebecca L. Sandefur and Edward O. Laumann, Updated Sep 24, 2008
Published by The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2005 Over the past several decades, the number of lawyers in large cities has doubled, women have entered the bar at an…
Corporate Purchasing of Legal Services
Author: Ryon Lancaster, Updated Feb 11, 2008
This project, which is a collaborative effort with the Program on the Legal Profession at Harvard Law School, examines the processes by which large corporations, and in particular the general…
After the JD
Authors: Bryant G. Garth, Robert L. Nelson, Ronit Dinovitzer, Joyce Sterling, Updated Feb 11, 2008
The After the JD (AJD) project is an empirical study of the career outcomes of a cohort of almost 5,000 new lawyers, offering both a nationally representative picture of lawyer career trajectories…
Senior Status in the Legal Academy
Authors: Elizabeth Mertz, Wamucii Njogu , Carol Greenhouse, Updated Jan 23, 2008
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…
Networks among Lawyers Active in National Policymaking
Author: John P. Heinz, Updated Jan 23, 2008
This project examines patterns of contact among lawyers active in organizations spanning the full ideological range of American domestic politics. Network analysis techniques enable us to examine…
Lawyers of the Right, Networks and Organization
Authors: John P. Heinz, Anthony Paik , Ann Southworth, Updated Jan 23, 2008
Lawyers for conservative and libertarian causes are active in organizing interest groups within the conservative coalition, and networks of relationships among those lawyers help to maintain and…
A Peace Corps for Lawyers: From Legal Services to the Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative
Authors: John Hagan, Ron Levi, Updated Jan 23, 2008
This project is an historical and empirical study of the Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative (CEELI) and its life course implications for its voluntary lawyer participants. It represents…
From Law School to Later Life
Author: John Hagan, Fiona Kay and Ronald J. Daniels, Updated Jan 17, 2008
Studying the evolution of lawyers’ careers, particularly differences in career tracks between men and women. Nunc dolor nulla, egestas id, adipiscing faucibus, accumsan id, turpis. Ut cursus,…

Regulation

The Impact of Banks, Regulation, and Taxes on the Survival and Operation of Entrepreneurial Ventures
Author: Austan Goolsbee, Updated Dec 1, 2008
This project is using confidential data from the U.S. Census about the characteristics of entrepreneurs and small business owners to examine the impact of tax and other policies on the operation of…
Surrogate Decisionmaking at the End of Life: An Observational Study
Author: Susan P. Shapiro, Updated Jan 24, 2008

Social justice

Imprisonment and Neighborhood Political Participation
Author: Traci Burch, Updated Oct 16, 2008
By 2007, more than 2.25 million people were in prison in the United States. In an election year where every vote counts and our political system seems poised for a dramatic change, it is imperative…
Emergency Politics: Paradox, Law, Democracy
Author: Bonnie Honig, Updated May 15, 2008
This project is a book that examines what opportunities might exist within the frame of emergency politics for democratic action. How is executive branch power dependent, even in emergency…
The Lawyer Statistical Report
Author: Barbara A. Curran, Updated Apr 22, 2008
The Lawyer Statistical Report, which has been an early and continuing publication in cooperation with Martindale-Hubbell, provides a profile of the legal profession and data on its composition and…
Cause Lawyering in Context
Authors: Laura Beth Nielsen, Catherine Albiston, Updated Feb 12, 2008
The Constraints and Opportunities of Practicing Public Law in Public Interest Law firms will provide an unprecedented, empirical portrait of a national sample of the public interest bar. Aenean eros…
Employment Discrimination Litigation
Authors: Robert L. Nelson, Laura Beth Nielsen, Ryon Lancaster, John Donohue III, Peter Siegelman, Updated Feb 11, 2008
At the center of current debates about the role of anti-discrimination law in American society is the system of discrimination litigation. Despite the sheer magnitude of changes in employment…
The Effects of Land Restitution in South Africa: A Qualitative Study
Author: Bernadette Atuahene, Updated Feb 11, 2008
Preliminary research has resulted in the article, “From Reparations to Restoration: Moving from Restoring Property to Restoring Economic and Political Visibility,” which argues that…
Legal Services for the Poor: A Supply Side Analysis
Authors: Stephen Daniels, Joanne Martin, Updated Jan 23, 2008
Providing adequate legal services to the poor is a perennial problem. Typically, it is addressed in terms of the amount of unmet demand. Little attention, however, is paid to the supply side of the…
Measuring the Impact of Crack Cocaine
Authors: Steven D. Levitt, Roland Fryer, Updated Jan 23, 2008
This project is developing a statistical index to measure the extent to which crack cocaine can account for the adverse trends in many indicators of African American progress in major urban areas…
The Foundation and Application of Disparate Impact Doctrine
Author: James J. Heckman, Updated Jan 23, 2008
The goals of this project include (1) the development of models and methods for detecting discrimination due to disparate treatment and disparate impact; (2) the examination of the extension of…