Current projects

Civil justice

The Future of Latinos in the United States: Law, Opportunity, and Mobility: Authors: Robert L. Nelson, Rachel F. Moran, Updated Aug 25, 2016; The research project co-directors and manager with Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, Cook County Commissioner and former mayoral candidate, at the Midwest Roundtable of the Future of Latinos Project on June 7,…
Public Opinion and the Civil Justice System: Author: Stephen Daniels, Updated Oct 13, 2015; 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…
Roles Beyond Lawyers: Author: Rebecca Sandefur, Updated Oct 13, 2015; Many in the United States who need assistance handling civil justice issues do not obtain it; some call this an “access to justice crisis.” Emerging strategies for responding include new…
Organizational Capacity and Neighborhood Political Participation: Author: Traci Burch, Updated Oct 13, 2015; This project explores the ways in which the structural features of neighborhoods (such as formal political, social, and religious organizations and other amenities) as well as demographic features of…
Building on the Arizona Filming Project: Authors: Shari Seidman Diamond, Mary R. Rose , Beth Murphy, Updated Apr 6, 2015; This project was made possible by a unique opportunity to record real jury deliberations. The book currently under completion uses the deliberations of 50 civil trials to answer a variety of…
Access to Justice: Authors: Robert L. Nelson, Laura Beth Nielsen, Rebecca Sandefur, Updated Aug 7, 2013; http://www.americanbarfoundation.org/research/A2J.html
The Heckman Equation: Author: James J. Heckman, Updated Nov 30, 2012; 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…
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 Oct 31, 2012; This project is examining the effects of tort reform on plaintiffs’ lawyers’ practices in Texas. Recognizing that these lawyers are the gatekeepers of the civil justice system and that…
Optimizing the Jury Instruction Process: Authors: Shari Seidman Diamond, Elizabeth L. Murphy, Updated Apr 18, 2012; This project studies approaches courts can use in revising jury instructions.
Accessing Justice in Contemporary America: The Community Needs and Services Study: Authors: Laura Beth Nielsen, Rebecca Sandefur, Pascoe Pleasence, Updated Apr 3, 2012; This community-sited, multi-method study investigates the American public’s experiences with problems that fall within the purview of the civil justice system.
The Legal Complex and Struggles for Political Liberalism: Author: Terence Halliday, Updated Mar 2, 2012; 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…
Conceptualizing, Contextualizing, and Testing the Effects of the Rule of Law: Authors: Robert L. Nelson, Tom Ginsburg, Updated Dec 29, 2011; Using a mix of methodologies, this project seeks to identify the conditional mechanisms under which the rule of law produces its desired results. First, the project exploits its unique access to the…
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: Author: 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…

Criminal justice

Criminal Defense in China: Authors: Terence Halliday, Sida Liu, University of Wisconsin, Department of Sociology and School of Law, Updated Jan 22, 2016; Terence Halliday and Sida Liu are completing a National Science Foundation funded research program that studies the development of criminal procedure law and practice in China. The research has…
Capabilities and Self-control: Implications for Crime, Health and the Law: Author: James J. Heckman, Updated Apr 6, 2015; Capabilities are the capacities that affect social performance: cognition, personality, and health. This project supports joint research on the economics and psychology of capabilities with an…
Colorism and Sentence Length: Author: Traci Burch, Updated Mar 27, 2015; Exploration of the relationship of skin color and disparities in criminal sentencing in Georgia, a state that classifies inmates by skin color as well as race. Early unpublished findings indicate…
Imprisonment and Neighborhood Political Participation: Author: Traci Burch, Updated Mar 27, 2015; This project explores the impact of mass imprisonment and other aspects of the criminal justice system on political behavior. A book stemming from the project, entitled Trading Democracy for…
Home Foreclosures and Criminal Violence: Authors: John Hagan, Andrea Cann Chandrasekher, Updated Mar 5, 2013; This is a study of the patterning of bank foreclosures in Chicago and the possible relationship of foreclosures to neighborhood increases in person and property crime.
Punishment Regimes and the Multi-Level Effects of Parental Imprisonment: Inter-Institutional, Inter-Generational and Inter-Sectional Models of Inequality and Exclusion: Authors: John Hagan, Holly Foster, Updated Mar 5, 2013; 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…
Moral Judgment and the Psychology of Legal Blame: Author: Janice Nadler, Updated Jun 7, 2011; In this project, I propose to conduct a series of experiments to map the contours ofpsychological blame, as it is influenced by the wrongdoer’s motive, the wrongdoer’s character, and…
Explaining Death and Atrocity in Darfur: Authors: John Hagan, Alberto Palloni, Updated Feb 9, 2009; Drawing on a unique set of data - interviews with refugees - this project is examining empirically the claims of genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. It will provide an objective and…
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…
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

Ethnicity, Inc: Author: John Comaroff, Updated Apr 7, 2015; This study investigates the conditions under which ethnic groupings seek empowerment by incorporating themselves, by deploying their sovereign legal status for economic ends, and by copyrighting…
Rule of Law Discourses: Author: Jothie Rajah, Updated Apr 7, 2015; This study analyses the different ways in which global institutional actors (the UN, the World Bank, the International Commission of Jurists, the World Justice Project) define ‘rule of…
Writing Rights: Innovation and Diffusion in National Constitutions: Author: Tom Ginsburg, Updated Apr 6, 2015; This project examines the origins and diffusion of rights in national constitutions from 1789 to present, using new data from the Comparative Constitutions Project. Unlike the existing literature,…
Punctuated Globalization: Law, Institutionalization, and Globalization in Medicine and Health Care: Author: Carol A. Heimer, Updated Jan 29, 2014; This project will use the case of medicine and health care to look closely at how developments in law affect globalization. The legal regulation of health care is a useful arena in which to…
Global Legislators: The Making of International Trade Law: Authors: Terence Halliday, Susan Block-Lieb, Updated Mar 5, 2013; This book project provides an empirically-based analysis of how global norms are produced for international trade law, which states or non-state organizations are the most influential shapers of…
Crime, War and Wealth in Pre-and Post-Invasion Iraq: Author: John Hagan, Updated Mar 5, 2013; The U.S. led invasion and occupation of Iraq by Coalition forces coincided with a transformation in crimes against persons and property. Drawing on three data sets outlining the experiences of a…
Globalization of Law and Markets: Author: Terence Halliday, Updated Jun 15, 2011; In the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008/2009, Stanford University Press published the prize-winning Bankrupt: Global Lawmaking and Systemic Financial Crisis. Authors Terence Halliday and…
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

Constructing Brown v. Board of Education: Ideology and Constitutional Change, 1944-2007: Author: Christopher Schmidt, Updated Apr 7, 2015; This book project examines how people have used-and more often than not misused-Brown and its history to advance claims about the meaning of constitutional equality, the impact of segregation, the…
Local Courts and African American Life, 1865-1930: Author: Dylan C. Penningroth, Updated Apr 7, 2015; This book project seeks to describe and analyze African Americans’ participation in law at the local level from the Civil War to the beginnings of the modern civil rights movement. It combines…
The New Legal Realism: Authors: Elizabeth Mertz, University of California at Irvine School of Law, University of Wisconsin Institute for Legal Studies, Emory University School of Law, Updated Nov 2, 2014; The 10-year anniversary U.S. conference on New Legal Realism was co-sponsored by the American Bar Foundation and the University of California-Irvine Law School and was held in Irvine on August 29-30,…
The Sit-Ins: Protest, Law, and Social Change: Author: Christopher Schmidt, Updated Feb 3, 2014; This book project is a legal history of the lunch counter sit-in movement of 1960s. It tells the story of the sit-ins, the events they set in motion, and what they achieved. The central argument is…
Suing Henry Ford: America's First Hate Speech Case: Author: Victoria Saker Woeste, Updated Oct 19, 2012; This 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 to stop…
Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580-1865: Author: Christopher L. Tomlins, Updated Sep 25, 2012; Freedom Bound, published September 2010, is the end product of a project of research that has examined the legal history of work and labor, the history of colonizing, and the construction of civic…
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…
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

The Language of Law Professors: In Their Own Voices: Author: Elizabeth Mertz, Updated Aug 22, 2016; A companion study to the “Senior Status” project, this research provides a more fine-grained and linguistically sophisticated perspective on today’s law professors in the U.S.. Data…
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, Updated Feb 10, 2016; 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…
The Law of Law Professors: In Their Own Voices: Authors: , Updated Apr 7, 2015; A companion study to the “Senior Status” project, this research provides a more fine-grained and linguistically sophisticated perspective on today’s law professors in the U.S.. Data…
The Rise of Lawyer Activism in China: Authors: Terence Halliday, Sida Liu, Updated Apr 6, 2015; A study of the varieties of activism exercised by China’s lawyers in criminal defense, the protection of basic legal freedoms, and public interest causes, such as health, the environment,…
Lawyers in the Pursuit of Basic Legal Rights: Criminal Defense in China: Authors: Terence Halliday, Sida Liu, Updated Apr 6, 2015; This project undertakes a major empirical study on criminal defense lawyers and political liberalism in China using a combination of social science methods, including interviews, media analysis,…
A Cohort Study of the Global Economic Recession and the Early Careers of Women and Men Lawyers in New York City, Paris, and Frankfurt: Authors: John Hagan, Patricia Parker, Gabriele Plickert, Hans Merkens, Updated Apr 6, 2015; 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…
The Language of Law School: Author: Elizabeth Mertz, Updated Nov 2, 2014; This project, funded by the American Bar Foundation and the Spencer Foundation, examined the language of first-year law school classrooms. Employing an innovative empirical design, the study used…
Early Post-Law School Careers of Women and Men Lawyers in U.S. and German Cities: Authors: John Hagan, Hans Merkens, Patricia Parker, and Gabriele Plickert, Updated Aug 28, 2014; International Study of Lawyers Berlin - Frankfurt am Main - New York City - Washington D.C. Free University Berlin and Law Associations of Berlin and Frankfurt Internationale…
After Tenure: Senior Status in the Legal Academy: Authors: , Updated Apr 4, 2014; 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: Authors: John P. Heinz, Ann Southworth , Anthony Paik, Updated Mar 6, 2013; This study examines the networks of relationships among lawyers engaged in a broad range of political issues, including abortion, gun control, judicial selection, eminent domain, bankruptcy, medical…
From Law School to Later Life: Authors: John Hagan, Fiona Kay and Ronald J. Daniels, Updated Dec 14, 2012; The purpose of this research is to increase our understanding of how the large-scale entry of women with men into the profession in the last quarter of the 20th century has changed both the…
After the JD: Authors: Bryant G. Garth, Robert L. Nelson, Ronit Dinovitzer, Gabriele Plickert, Joyce Sterling, Updated Oct 19, 2012; 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…
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…
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…

Regulation

Surrogate Decisionmaking at the End of Life: An Observational Study: Author: Susan P. Shapiro, Updated Mar 30, 2016; 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…
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…

Social justice

Antigone, Interrupted: Author: Bonnie Honig, Updated Apr 8, 2015; Antigone, the heroine of Sophocles' famous 5th centruy play and a nearly universal figure of civil disobedience admired today worldwide by lawyers and activists alike, has been absorbed into a…
Reconstituting Civic Community: Hate Speech and the State in the Post-World War II Era: Author: Victoria Saker Woeste, Updated Apr 7, 2015; This project explores the relationship between hate speech regulation, school desegregation, and public housing desegregation laws in Midwestern U.S. cities after 1945.
Limiting Laws: Negotiating Crime, Legal Status, and Immigration Law: Author: Sarah Morando Lakhani, Updated Jun 24, 2014; What challenges and opportunities does the U.S. government present to immigrant crime victims and their lawyers through the new U Visa legal status? How do immigrant petitioners and their attorneys…
Mediated Justice: How Videoconferencing Shapes Deportation: Author: Sarah Morando Lakhani, Updated Jun 24, 2014; Although the U.S. legal system is typically reluctant to adopt technological innovations, many courts have been receptive to video technology. However, videoconferencing has only penetrated the…
The Mexican Second Generation at Work in a New Destination: Author: Sarah Morando Lakhani, Updated Jun 24, 2014; A wealth of research has analyzed the labor market integration of Mexican immigrants in new rural and urban destinations across the United States. Today, after two decades of settled migration in…
Mediated Justice: How Videoconferencing Shapes Deportation: Authors: , Updated Jun 24, 2014; Although the U.S. legal system is typically reluctant to adopt technological innovations, many courts have been receptive to video technology. However, videoconferencing has only penetrated the…
Limiting Laws: Negotiating Crime, Legal Status, and Immigration Law: Authors: , Updated Jun 24, 2014; What challenges and opportunities does the U.S. government present to immigrant crime victims and their lawyers through the new U Visa legal status? How do immigrant petitioners and their attorneys…
The Effects of Land Restitution in South Africa: A Qualitative Study: Author: Bernadette Atuahene, Updated Feb 21, 2013; Under the South African Restitution of Land Rights Act (LRA), only those dispossessed of a “right in land after 1913 as a result of a racially discriminatory law or practice” are eligible…
Contested Constructions of Discrimination: Authors: Laura Beth Nielsen, Jill D. Weinberg , Jeremy Freese, Updated Dec 12, 2012; Contested Constructions uses experimental research to investigate how judges and laypeople define employment discrimination and perceptions of the legal system as the appropriate forum to adjudicate…
Employment Discrimination Litigation: Authors: Robert L. Nelson, Laura Beth Nielsen, Ryon Lancaster, John Donohue III, Peter Siegelman, Updated Dec 12, 2012; 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…
Pursuing Law’s Promise: Researching Access to Justice in 21st Century America: Authors: Robert L. Nelson, Laura Beth Nielsen, Aaron C. Smyth, Updated Apr 3, 2012; Through a series of innovative empirical research projects, Pursuing Law’s Promise investigates Americans’ experiences with their civil justice problems and the institutions of remedy…
The Lawyer Statistical Report: Author: Barbara A. Curran, Updated Feb 9, 2012; 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…
Legal Services for the Poor: A Supply Side Analysis: Author: 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…

Current projects

Civil justice

Criminal justice

Law and globalization

Legal history

Legal profession

Regulation

Social justice

Research