Law & Social Inquiry
The ABF sponsors Law & Social Inquiry (LSI), a multidisciplinary quarterly publication of original research articles and review essays that analyze law, legal institutions, and the legal profession from a sociolegal perspective.
LSI contributors examine law and society issues across multiple disciplines, including anthropology, criminology, economics, history, philosophy, political science, sociology, and social psychology. The journal’s combination of empirical and theoretical scholarship and critical appraisal of the latest sociolegal scholarship makes LSI an indispensable source for legal scholars and practitioners.
For more information and submission guidelines, please visit the journals’ page at Cambridge University Press.
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Graduate Student Paper Competition
Law & Social Inquiry (LSI) conducts an annual competition for the best journal-length paper in the field of law and social science written by a graduate or law student.
We invite submissions from graduate and law students and nominations of student work from faculty. The author must be a graduate student or law student at the time the paper was written and when submitted. Faculty nominations should include a short description along with the paper and contact details for the student. Submissions will be evaluated by our editors. The winning submission will be sent to selected scholars for advisory reviews to aid with revisions prior to publication in LSI. The author(s) will receive a total cash prize of $500.00 (US).
Entries have closed on this year’s competition. Please stay tuned for news about this year’s winner and next year’s competition and contact lsi@abfn.org for more information.
We’re pleased to announce the winners of Law & Social Inquiry’s 2025 Graduate Student Paper Competition below.
“Taxing Aliens and International Law: Nationalist China’s (1928-1949) Income Tax Negotiations with Treaty Powers”
Ming-hsi Chu
“Taxing Aliens and International Law: Nationalist China’s (1928-1949) Income Tax Negotiations with Treaty Powers” examines how Chinese international lawyers used international law to assert fiscal sovereignty through income tax reform during China’s Nationalist period. Drawing on a variety of American, German, British, and Chinese diplomatic archives, the paper shows that Chinese lawyers used international law both to legitimize state-building efforts and to challenge the imperial standards embedded in global fiscal norms.
Chu (he/him) is a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department at Northwestern University.
Editorial Staff
All inquiries regarding the journal or submission criteria can be directed to lsi@abfn.org.
Editorial Board
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International Book Essay Editorial Panel
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