New Legal Realism and the ABF
The New Legal Realism Project (NLR) was initially sponsored by the American Bar Foundation and the Institute for Legal Studies at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Since the opening conference, scholars from many institutions have joined in NLR events and conversations. There have been multiple subsequent conferences, including one at the Emory University School of Law.
The opening NLR conference was held in June 2004, with major grant support from the ABF. It was co-sponsored by the University of Wisconsin Law School’s Institute for Legal Studies, also a longterm center for social science research on law. ABF participants in the conference included Bryant Garth, Elizabeth Mertz, Laura Beth Nielsen, and Robert Nelson. The conference had several panels drawn from the Discrimination Research Group, also an ABF-supported project. The conference brought together scholars from law, anthropology, sociology, history, psychology, and economics. This initial conference resulted in the first known collaborative publication effort between a law review and a peer-reviewed journal. The ABF’s journal, Law & Social Inquiry (Vol. 31, No. 4, 2006) published results of the conference focused on employment discrimination and transnational law. The Wisconsin Law Review (Vol. 2005, No. 2) published presentations from the conference that provided an overview of the evolving methods and questions of New Legal Realism, along with exemplary research on law, poverty, and land – as well as on law and discrimination. Click here to learn more about the conference.
Scholars associated with NLR have formed a Collaborative Research Network under the aegis of the Law & Society Association, which sponsors annual panels at the Law & Society Association meetings. Many of these panels have centered on developing rigorous empirical legal research methods. The CRN is titled “Realist and Empirical Legal Methods,” and is listed on the LSA website. In June, 2006, ABF Director Robert Nelson joined University of Wisconsin’s Stewart Macaulay and ABF researcher Elizabeth Mertz (also a Wisconsin professor) for a week-long blog forum on the topic of New Legal Realism. The blog forum drew a large audience and sparked lively discussions.
Since the initial conference, NLR Project discussions have been featured twice at the American Association of Law Schools annual conference. One series of NLR conferences explored empirical legal perspectives on women, work, and family. Other conferences have examined law and poverty, and have established new frameworks for law to “work from the world up.” Legal scholars from across the spectrum of U.S. law schools are joining top-notch empirical researchers in ongoing NLR discussions designed to provide the world of law with the best available social science knowledge.
For more information on NLR events click here.