Research Projects

Civil justice

Access to Justice: Author: Rebecca Sandefur; Since the founding of the American Bar Foundation, ABF scholars have been deeply engaged with fundamental questions of access to justice. Faculty Fellow Rebecca L. Sandefur's research on access to…
Analyzing the Influential Early Childhood Policies that are Proven to Promote Human Flourishing: Author: James J. Heckman; A large and growing literature documents the effectiveness of early childhood interventions on a variety of outcomes, including crime, education, teenage pregnancy, earnings, health, and mental…
Tenant Screening and Fair Housing Law in the Information Age: Author: Anna Reosti; This project contains two extensions of a larger study of tenant screening and fair housing law in the information age. The first extension investigates the costs of housing searches for renters with…
Conceptualizing Property Takings: Author: Bernadette Atuahene; Using the concept of a “dignity taking,” linking the unconsented taking of property rights with the deprivation of dignity, this research project seeks to further understand the…
Contested Constructions of Discrimination: Author: Laura Beth Nielsen; Despite the volume of empirical research about employment civil rights litigation, we know very little about how people come to assess whether workplace experiences are thought to be…
Consent to Sex on Campus: Author: Laura Beth Nielsen; This project is a multi-year, large-scale data collection and analysis phase of a research project about “new” civil rights. Nielsen is studying the impact (if any) of the Obama-era…
The Future of Latinos in the United States: Law, Opportunity, and Mobility: Authors: Robert L. Nelson, Rachel F. Moran; To learn more about our Future of Latinos project, please visit: futureoflatinos.org "The Future of Latinos in the United States: Law, Opportunity, and Mobility" has three goals: 1) To advance…
Employment Civil Rights: Authors: Robert L. Nelson, Laura Beth Nielsen, Ronit Dinovitzer; The Employment Civil Rights Project is generating findings on the changing dynamics of employment discrimination litigation, the types of cases that succeed in litigation, and the parties'…
The Heckman Equation: Author: James J. Heckman; Research. Data. Lectures. Advocacy. The resources on The Heckman Equation promote the value of investing in early childhood development. Click here to visit the site. See also: The Heckman…

Criminal justice

Policing and Political Participation: Author: Traci Burch; Despite the prominence of policing and police misconduct on the national agenda, scholars still know very little about the extent to which police act in ways that are contrary to the public good and…
Adolescent and Adult Lives of Children of Parents Returning From Prison: Author: John Hagan; What is the impact of a parent returning from prison on their child? This project collects data on the historic return of parents from prison and its impact on the lives of their children. The…
Criminal Defense in China: Authors: Terence Halliday, Sida Liu; Terence Halliday and Sida Liu completed a National Science Foundation funded research project that studied the development of criminal procedure law and practice in China between 2005 and 2015. The…
Parental Incarceration: Authors: John Hagan, Holly Foster; 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…

Law and globalization

The Legal Transformation of Medicine: How Rules Work in the International World of HIV/AIDS: Author: Carol A. Heimer; This book project braids together investigations of three transformative events - the “legalization” and globalization of medicine and the advent of HIV/AIDS - in a study of how laws,…
Lessons for American Law & Public Policy from the Scandinavian Welfare State: Author: James J. Heckman; Poverty, inequality, and social mobility occupy the attention of lawmakers and the public around the world. A variety of legislative and administrative proposals to address these issues are currently…
Legal Defenses Against Democratic Decline: Author: Tom Ginsburg; ABF Research Professor Tom Ginsburg and his colleague Aziz Huq, University of Chicago Law School Professor, explore how democracies erode and how to better uphold democratic values by drawing on…
Globalization of Law and Markets: Author: Terence Halliday; This longstanding research program examines the ways global institutions create law for world trade and shape national markets. The most recently completed project studied interactions among global,…
World Justice Project: Authors: James J. Heckman, Robert L. Nelson; The World Justice Project (WJP) is a multinational, multidisciplinary initiative to strengthen the rule of law worldwide. It is building a broad and diverse constituency that will advance the rule of…

Legal history

Civil Rights: An American History: Author: Christopher Schmidt; This book project offers a history of how Americans have struggled over the meaning of the term “civil rights” from the Civil War through today. It provides an historical case study of…
African Americans and Chicago’s Criminal Courts, 1896-1964: Author: Tera Agyepong; This project examines Cook County’s municipal court system between 1896 and 1964. It pays particular attention to state criminal laws and sheds light on the kinds of local-level processes that…
The Sit-Ins: Protest and Legal Change in the Civil Rights Era: Author: Christopher Schmidt; This book project is a legal history of the lunch counter sit-in movement of the 1960s. It tells the story of the sit-ins, the events they set in motion, and what they achieved. The central argument…
The VAT Laggard: A Comparative History of U.S. Resistance to the Value-added Tax: Author: Ajay K. Mehrotra; This project explores how and why the United States has historically rejected national consumption taxes. Nearly all developed countries, and many in the developing world, have some type of a…
New Legal Realism: Author: Elizabeth Mertz; The New Legal Realism (NLR) Project's goal is to develop rigorous, genuinely interdisciplinary approaches to the empirical study of law. Initially sponsored by the American Bar Foundation and the…

Legal profession

Portrait Project 2.0: Author: Hon. Goodwin Liu, Ajay K. Mehrotra, Shih-Chun Chien; Asian Americans are a growing presence in all sectors of the legal profession. They work in BigLaw and in smaller firms and solo practice, and as government attorneys, corporate counsel, prosecutors,…
Rule of Law Discourses: Author: Jothie Rajah; ‘Rule of law’ is a concept and category that is incessantly invoked in the international public domain. At different times and in different hands, a range of different meanings has…
The Financing of Legal Education: Author: Stephen Daniels; This project follows up on and expands the work of the American Bar Association Task Force on the Financing of Legal Education (Daniels served as the reporter and consultant for the Task Force). It…
Alternative Legal Professionals: Author: Stephen Daniels; The lack of access to competent legal assistance because of the absence of resources, social capital, awareness, or because of geographic distance is described as a justice gap. The existence of this…
Science and the Legal System: Author: Shari Seidman Diamond; This research (with Richard O. Lempert) considers the relationship between scientists and engineers and the legal system. Surveys and in-depth interviews have yielded a wealth of findings, including…
After Tenure: Senior Status in the Legal Academy: Authors: Elizabeth Mertz, Katherine Barnes, University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law; Wamucii Njogu, Northeastern Illinois University; 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…
Research Group on Legal Diversity: Authors: Robert L. Nelson, Ronit Dinovitzer; The American Bar Foundation is committed to expanding equity and opportunity within the legal profession and in society at large. It pursues this goal in the selection of its leadership, the hiring…
After the JD: Authors: Bryant G. Garth, Robert L. Nelson, Ronit Dinovitzer, Gabriele Plickert, Joyce Sterling; The After the JD (AJD) project is the first and most ambitious effort to gather systematic, detailed data about the careers and experiences of a national cross-section of law graduates. It follows a…

Regulation

Trust 2.0: Law, Social Control, and New Technologies of Trust: Author: Susan P. Shapiro; Observers of the world of trust or fiduciary relationships have identified an evolution from institutional trust-which flows upward from individuals to states, organizations, and third parties-to…
Public Opinion, Private Governance, and the Influence of Source Credibility: Authors: Janice Nadler, David A. Dana, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law; In this project, we seek to explore whether corporate endorsements and implementations of practices influence public support for legislation and regulation that would generally mandate such…
Surrogate Decisionmaking at the End of Life: An Observational Study: Author: Susan P. Shapiro; The most significant “life-and-death” decisions of our lives - literally - are overwhelmingly made by others who act on our behalf when we are not competent to make our own medical…