Letter from the Director
Robert L. Nelson, Director
As the American Bar Foundation begins a new academic year in 2008-2009, there is little question that we are facing extraordinary times and extraordinary opportunities. The historic national political elections that took place in November and the dramatic turmoil in the world’s financial markets both promise to reshape the landscape of law and the legal profession. There is no more important time than now to engage in rigorous and objective research on law, so that we may understand how we came to the crisis we confront and to use the best research available to chart a course for the future. ABF researchers and projects literally are at the forefront of policy debates that will influence the role that law and the legal profession will play in our society and the world.
Austan Goolsbee, who has been a research professor at the ABF since 1996 and is a professor of economics at the Booth Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago, gained a reputation as a leading figure in public finance through ABF projects on the impact of taxes on internet sales, the forces that determine the diffusion of broadband technology, and the effect of taxes on small business success and failure. Goolsbee has been tapped by President-elect Obama to be the chief economist and staff director of the new Economic Recovery Advisory Panel. We wish Professor Goolsbee congratulations and good luck in this important new post.
ABF research may offer important insights into the roots of the current global financial crisis. Research Professor Terence Halliday and co-author Bruce Carruthers of Northwestern University have completed a book on the origins of the Asian financial crisis and the responses of global financial institutions to that crisis (Bankrupt: Global Lawmaking and Systemic Financial Crisis, forthcoming Stanford University Press). Halliday and Carruthers demonstrate that although a consensus on the shape of bankruptcy law developed among international financial institutions, how bankruptcy reforms are implemented very much depends on politics within the nation state. Their analysis should encourage global financial institutions to reconsider the notion that one kind of legal regime is best regardless of local conditions.
In this and other efforts, ABF research is mapping trends in law and globalization. The ABF worked with immediate past ABA President William Neukom’s World Justice Project, chaired by ABF Board Member William Hubbard, to develop a program of empirical research on the rule of law that was presented at the World Justice Forum in Vienna in July 2008. ABF Research Professor and Nobel Laureate economist, James Heckman, brought together some of the world’s most distinguished scholars on law, economics, and politics, including Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen and others. Their papers, first distributed in Vienna, are due for publication as Global Perspectives on the Rule of Law (Routledge-Cavendish forthcoming). The collection demonstrates that while the rule of law has very clear benefits, challenges remain to effectively achieve the rule of law in many national contexts and to better realize the benefits of the rule of law for all members of society.
A second group of scholars, led by Professor Emeritus of Hong Kong University Law School and past Special United Nations Representative to Nepal, Yash Ghai, examined international access to justice issues. Their papers are due for publication as Marginalized Communities and Access to Justice (Routledge-Cavendish forthcoming).
These efforts have brought the highest level of academic research to the World Justice Project’s efforts to define, measure, and strengthen the rule of law. The debates this scholarship addresses must and will continue. But the Project’s programmatic efforts have been informed and improved by that scholarship.
ABF Research Professor John Hagan has just published a book that brings together his research on the genocide in Darfur (Darfur and the Crime of Genocide, Cambridge University Press, 2008). Hagan’s article in Science (2006) provided a scientific basis for a more realistic estimate of the death toll in Darfur and drew widespread attention from the media and the international community. This book further examines empirical data on the nature of the killings in Darfur and how these might be interpreted by an international criminal tribunal.
The ABF is looking to expand such path-breaking research through its new Center on Law and Globalization, a collaboration with the University of Illinois College of Law, which began operations last year.
ABF research also is examining urgent questions about the rule of law in the United States and other matters of pressing importance to practicing lawyers and concerned citizens. In this very election cycle, new Research Professor Traci Burch investigated the effects of incarceration on the political participation
of the urban communities which contain large numbers of minorities and the poor. Research Professor Bonnie Honig is publishing a book on the challenges to democracy posed by times of national emergency, such as we witnessed in the aftermath of September 11th. (Emergency Politics: Paradox, Law, Democracy, Princeton University Press, forthcoming 2009). Honig argues that while political leaders often call for constraints on freedom in times of emergency, there are ways in which citizens may effectively expand democratic politics in these moments. An ABF research project is studying how different racial and ethnic groups living in several different cities perceive the fairness of police conduct in traffic stops. The research is fundamental to understanding the legitimacy of policing in the eyes of the public. Such patterns are critical to 
understanding the rule of law in the United States.
In an unprecedented national study of lawyers’ careers, the After the JD project, the ABF is looking at the determinants of opportunity and satisfaction among the new generation of American lawyers. Very preliminary results suggest some interesting findings. We have begun to see a divergence in the careers of males and females, with only 4% of males, but 11% of females working part-time. Some seven years after passing the bar, respondents with debt still have an average of $56,937 in educational debt. Respondents report that debt levels have influenced their decisions on what jobs to take and what sector to work in, but has relatively less effect on decisions about whether and when to have children. Strikingly, some 53% of respondents changed practice settings between the first wave of interviews conducted in 2003 and the second wave of interviews conducted in 2007. Thus speculation about dramatically higher levels of job mobility among young lawyers appears to be borne out in our data. Mobility rates are especially high among large-firm attorneys. We plan to write a preliminary report from the project this fall and to begin to present the results in a series of seminars and conferences this academic year.
ABF research is looking at the changing face of public interest law practice and the invisible ways in which judicial rulings have undercut the potential reach of public interest litigation. ABF research has 
documented the dramatic benefits and much lower costs of providing support for early childhood development rather than interventions in later life through the juvenile justice or criminal justice system. In numerous projects, the ABF is examining how the performance of legal institutions will affect the legitimacy of law itself—whether juries actually are fair and rational in their deliberations and decisions; whether citizens view judicial decisions on commercial takings to be fair; whether parties to employment discrimination disputes view litigation as a fair and efficient process; to name but a few.
This year the Law and Society Association, the leading scholarly society in law and social science, gave special recognition to two ABF research professors. John Comaroff, anthropologist at the ABF and the University of Chicago, and his longtime co-author, Jean Comaroff, were awarded the Harry Kalven Prize for distinguished scholarship. The Kalven Prize is awarded for a body of law and society scholarship. It was given to the Comaroffs in recognition of their extraordinary contributions to the anthropology of law, including pathbreaking work on the history of colonialism in South Africa and of resistance to apartheid. This is only the second Kalven Prize awarded to an ABF scholar. John Heinz and his collaborator Edward Laumann received the award in 1986 for Chicago Lawyers: the Social Structure of the Bar.
Elizabeth Mertz, of the ABF and the University of Wisconsin Law School, has been awarded the Herbert Jacob Prize for the best book in law and society for The Language of Law School: Learning to “Think Like a Lawyer” (Oxford University Press 2007).
These prizes signify the quality and importance of the work being done at the ABF. We can all rightly take pride in the accomplishments of these two members of our faculty.
The pages that follow provide more information on the more than 40 ongoing research projects through which the ABF is bringing the best social science expertise to bear on the most important questions of our time.
In addition to this research activity, the ABF is striving to build the next generation of scholars who will teach and do research on how the law actually works. This year we welcomed four new doctoral fellows from distinguished research institutions around the country—Cornell University, MIT, Stanford University, and UC –Santa Barbara—who are conducting their own research on law, while interacting with, learning from, and engaging with the ABF research faculty. Some of these fellowships are funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation to the Law and Society Association, with whom the ABF is partnering as the residential home for the fellows.
The ABF remains a truly unique institution. No law school or social science department is capable of mounting research on the law and legal systems on a scale or of the quality that is the trademark of ABF research. We could not do this work without the legacy of support we have received from the legal profession, both from the ongoing grant we receive from the American Bar Endowment or from the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation. In this time of financial challenges I urge all our friends to consider buying the insurance products of the American Bar Endowment and to contribute directly to the ABF either through our Fellows program or in other ways. If you are interested in becoming more involved in our programs, please contact me or my development and communications staff.
Finally I close with a note of sadness at the death of our past President and friend, Peter Moser, who passed away October 17, 2008. A longer statement of Peter’s accomplishments is contained in the commemoration in later pages of this report. Our thoughts are with Peter’s wife, Liz, and their family. Peter and Liz were and are great friends of the Foundation. They not only gave their time and talent to leading the ABF, they also gave generously in financial terms—establishing the Liz and Peter Moser Research Fund on Professionalism, Ethics, and Access to Justice. Peter understood the importance of research in advancing the cause of justice. For without an understanding of the forces that led us to our current challenges or the most promising directions for change, we cannot build a more just society. In the years ahead, we will honor Peter’s memory by conducting the very best research on ethics and access to justice.
Robert L. Nelson
Director and MacCrate Research Professor in the Legal Profession, and
Professor of Sociology and Law, Northwestern University