The Law and Society Assocation Annual Meeting presents an unparalleled opportunity for sociolegal scholars to connect and exchange ideas across many disciplines and academic backgrounds. This year’s Annual Meeting, to be held in Chicago, Illinois May 22-25, will feature presentations from over fifty current and former ABF Researchers and Program Scholars.
This year’s conference, themed “Politics of the Body at the Crossroads,” will consider the control of and compassion toward the body in law and society. The Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health Org decision, as well as the restrictive abortion bans this decision enabled in certain states, are one manifestation of increasing legal restrictions on the body; efforts to curtail access to gender affirming care are another.
Scholars attending this year’s annual meeting will consider and present research connected to important social, political, and legal questions surrounding the body, turning their attention toward LGBT equality, disability rights, the death penalty, reproductive justice, policing, immigration and displacement, sexual violence, global health, and more.
Below is a list of the ABF Scholars and Affiliates who will be presenting at this year’s meeting.
Please note: This schedule is accurate and up to date as of May 7, 2025, but may be subject to change. Please refer to the Law and Society Association website for updates and more information.
Thursday, May 22
8:00AM to 9:45AM
Innovative Research on Access to Civil Justice I: Challenges and Collaborative Solutions [Paper Session]
East Tower, Grand H
Discussant: Rebecca L. Sandefur, Faculty Fellow
Studying Resource Extraction in Africa: Methods, Concepts, Ethics, and Positionality [Roundtable Session]
East Tower, Grand K
Chair: James Thuo Gathii, 2022-2023 Neukom Chair
10:00AM to 11:45AM
Housing Law and the Political Economy of Spatial Inequity in American Cities [Paper Session]
East Tower, Grand J
Presenter: Anna Reosti, Research Professor
Presenting “The Implications of Limited Liability Ownership for Legal Enforcement of Rental Habitability Standards in Chicago
Innovative Research on Access to Civil Justice II: Justice, Inequality, and Privacy [Paper Session]
East Tower, Grand H
Discussant: Rebecca L. Sandefur, Faculty Fellow
The Diversity Dilemma: Legal Realism and the Defense of Academic Freedom Today [Roundtable Session]
East Tower, Michigan 1C
Participant: Kyneshawau Hurd, Postdoctoral Fellow
The Courts’ Impact on the Environment and Rights: How Participation and Judicial Doctrine Shape the Legal Landscape [Paper Session]
East Tower, Monroe 5 Boardroom
Presenter: Alyse Bertenthal, ABF/JPB Access to Justice Scholar
Presenting “The Conceptual Court”
After the Prison Experience [Paper Session]
East Tower, Randolph 2
Presenter: Reyna Hernandez, Doctoral Fellow
Presenting “‘It’s a Very Powerful Piece of Paper for a Petitioner’: The Certificate of Innocence as a Site of State Power”
Conversations on Law and Religion [Multi-Book Author Meets Reader Session]
East Tower, Grand Suite 3
Author: Mona Oraby, 2020-21 Visiting Scholar
Punishing Immigration [Paper Session]
East Tower, Grand G
Presenter: Emily Ryo, 2020-21 ABF/JPB Foundation Access to Justice Scholar
Presenting “Inequalities in Legal Representation in Removal Proceedings in US Immigration Courts” with non-presenting coauthors Christopher Levesque, Weston Ley, and Ian Peacock
12:45PM to 2:30PM
Challenges in Jury Selection [Paper Session]
East Tower, Monroe 5 Boardroom
Non-presenting Coauthor: Shari Diamond, Research Professor
Coauthor Paula Hannaford-Agor will present “Studying Voir Dire: Cautionary Guidance on Research Methods”
The Turn to Process: American Legal, Political, and Economic Thought, 1870-1970 [Author Meets Reader Session]
East Tower, Michigan 3
Chair: Ajay Mehrotra, Research Professor
Prefiguration, Performativity, and Alternative Legalities [Roundtable Session]
East Tower, Grand I
Participant: Bonnie Honig, Affiliated Research Professor
2:45PM to 4:30PM
Race, Law, and Empire: New Perspectives on Puerto Rico’s Colonial Legal and Racial Histories [Multi-Book Author Meets Reader Session]
East Tower, Grand E
Reader: Jothie Rajah, Research Professor
Adjudication, Education, Regulation: Legal Frameworks for Justice Transformation [Paper Session]
East Tower, Roosevelt 3B
Presenter: Tracey Meares, Affiliated Scholar
Co-presenting, with Benjamin Justice, “Adjudication as Civic Education”
Friday, May 23
8:00AM to 9:45AM
Black Traditions in International Law and Relations: An Interdisciplinary Roundtable [Roundtable Session]
East Tower, Michigan 1C
Chair: James Gathii, 2022-23 Neukom Chair
Colonialism and International Law [Paper Session]
East Tower, Grand K
Chair and Discussant: Jack Jin Gary Lee, 2021-22 Visiting Scholar
Information, Regulation, and Surveillance: Can Better Records Management Lead to More Equality? [Paper Session]
East Tower, Grand H
Chair and Discussant: Karin Martin, 2021-22 ABF/JPB Foundation Access to Justice Scholar
Presenter: Sarah Lageson, 2020-21 ABF/JPB Foundation Access to Justice Scholar
Presenting “Automating Administrative Burden: The Case of Algorithmic Criminal Record Expungement” with non-presenting coauthors Ericka Adams and Elsa Chen
The Tension Between Today’s Criminal Legal Reforms and Tomorrow’s Abolition: Theorizing from Reformist Reforms [Paper Session]
East Tower, Grand D North
Presenter: Amber Powell, 2020 ABF/NSF Doctoral Fellow in Law and Inequality
Presenting “‘I Think It’s Mostly a Joke:’ Prison Rape Reform & the Politics of Carceral Protectionism”
10:00AM to 11:45AM
Finding Nomos: Law and Anthropology’s Humanistic Empiricism [Roundtable Session]
East Tower, Grand F
Participant: Jothie Rajah, Research Professor
Participant: Justin Richland, Faculty Fellow
Chair and Participant: Robert Gelles, Doctoral Fellow
Novel Perspectives on the Legal Profession [Paper Session]
East Tower, Grand H
Presenter: Amy Widman, 2024-25 ABF/JPB Foundation Access to Justice Scholar
Presenting “The Role of Expertise in Representation in Local Administrative Adjudication”
Land, Knowledge, and Rights [Paper Session]
East Tower, Grand Suite 3
Presenter: Rahim Kurwa, 2022-23 Visiting Scholar
Presenting “The Process is the Eviction: How Tenant Serving Organizations Describe the Landscape of Eviction Risk for Tenants in the Chicago Housing Authority”
12:45PM to 2:30PM
Defending American Democracy Against Trumpist Autocracy [Multi-Book Author Meets Reader Session]
East Tower, Monroe 3 Boardroom
Participant: Jothie Rajah, Research Professor
To Become and Destroy: Subjectification, Violence, and Culpability [Paper Session]
East Tower, Grand A
Chair and Discussant: Christopher Tomlins, Affiliated Research Professor
Algorithmic (In)justice [Paper Session]
East Tower, Michigan 3
Presenter: Sino Esthappan, Doctoral Fellow
Presenting “Relational Expertise and the Uses of Algorithmic Risk Assessment Scores in US Pretrial Hearings”
Legal Phantoms: Executive Action and the Haunting Failures of Immigration Law [Author Meets Reader Session]
East Tower, Michigan 1C
Reader: Emily Ryo, 2020-21 ABF/JPB Foundation Access to Justice Scholar
2:45PM to 4:30PM
The Human Condition: Choices, Commitments, and Consequences [Roundtable Session]
East Tower, Michigan 3
Participant: Carol Heimer, Research Professor
Working Toward Wellness [Paper Session]
East Tower, Grand A
Discussant: Laura Beth Nielsen, Research Professor
Chair and Presenter: Meera Deo, 2020-21 Neukom Chair
Presenting “Structured Wellbeing”
Common Place of Administrative Legitimacy [Paper Session]
East Tower, Grand H
Chair and Discussant: Alyse Bertenthal, ABF/JPB Access to Justice Scholar
Ethics and Advocacy: The Conservative Legal Movement After Populism [Roundtable Session]
East Tower, Randolph 1A
Participant: Robert Gelles, Doctoral Fellow
Race and the Law [Paper Session]
East Tower, Grand L
Presenter: Jack Jin Gary Lee, 2021-22 Visiting Scholar
Presenting “Law’s Ambivalence: on the Imperial Theology of the Rule of Law in the Crown Colony of Jamaica, 1865-1866
Gender, Power, and Law in Contemporary Times: Revisiting Institutional and Legal Responses to Sexual Violence [Paper Session]
East Tower, Michigan 1C
Discussant: Amber Powell, 2020 ABF/NSF Doctoral Fellow in Law and Inequality
4:45PM to 6:30PM
Intersections of Health and Law [Paper Session]
East Tower, Grand C North
Presenter: Carol Heimer, Research Professor
Presenting “’Without Prior Permission of His Superiors’: HIV Clinics in the Shadow of the Law”
Law & Society and the Audiovisual in the 21st Century Creative Roundtables—Roundtable 1: Change and Legal Activism in Times of Urgency [Roundtable Session]
East Tower, Grand K
Participant: Jothie Rajah, Research Professor
Downstream Consequences of Abortion Bans: Disrupting Lives, Practice, and Professions [Roundtable Session]
East Tower, Michigan 1B
Chair: Michelle Oberman, 2022 Visiting Scholar
New Sociolegal Books Centering Migrant Stories [Multi-Book Author Meets Reader Session]
East Tower, Roosevelt 1A
Reader: Shannon Gleeson, 2021-22 ABF/JPB Access to Justice Scholar
Evening
American Bar Foundation (ABF) and Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE) Cocktail reception
7:00PM to 9:00PM, Chicago Architecture Center
Attendance is by invitation only. Please contact Communications Director Melinda Kennedy, mkennedy@abfn.org, for more information.
Saturday, May 24
8:00AM to 9:45AM
Lay Participation and Civil Justice [Roundtable Session]
East Tower, Grand H
Chair and Participant: Matthew Burnett, Director of Research and Programs for the Access to Justice Research Initiative
Participant: Rebecca L. Sandefur, Faculty Fellow
Participant: Amy Widman, Access to Justice Scholar
Plundered: How Racist Policies Undermine Black Homeownership in America [Roundtable Session]
East Tower, Michigan 1C
Participant: Reuben Miller, Research Professor
Participant: Dylan C. Penningroth, Affiliated Research Professor
Research on Jury Decision Making I [Paper Session]
East Tower, Roosevelt 3B
Non-presenting Coauthor: Shari Diamond, Research Professor
Coauthor Mary Rose will present “Increasing a Sense of Duty: Jury Service and Citizen Participation”
Radical Politics and the Possibilities of Performativity [Paper Session]
East Tower, Roosevelt 2 Board
Presenter: Bonnie Honig, Affiliated Research Professor
Presenting “Bullying: Performativity and Deformativity in Eve Sedgwick, JL Austin, and Hannah Arendt,” as part of the mini-conference “How to Do Things with Law”
Thinking of Contracts Within an Emotional Frame [Paper Session]
East Tower, Michigan 2
Presenter: Hila Keren, 2025 ABF Visiting Scholar
Presenting “Contract Law in the Marginalization of Emotions”
Ethnography, Law & Society: New Books in the Field [New Books in the Feild Session]
East Tower, Grand K
Participant: Jack Jin Gary Lee, 2021-22 Visiting Scholar
Politics of the Body and Cultures of Judging: Well-Being, Adaptation, and Judicial Policy in Modern Courts [Paper Session]
East Tower, Grand Suite 2B
Presenter: Michele Statz, 2021-22 ABF/JPB Foundation Access to Justice Scholar
Presenting “Judges and Institutional Loss: Unresolved Grief and Moral Injury in Rural Tribal and State Courts”
Surveillance, Technology, and Policing [Paper Session]
East Tower, Roosevelt 3A
Discussant: Sarah Lageson, 2020-21 ABF/JPB Foundation Access to Justice Scholar
10:00AM to 11:45AM
Law and Society Scholars Discuss the State of the Civil Justice Field [Roundtable Session]
East Tower, Monroe 3 Boardroom
Participant: Rebecca L. Sandefur, Faculty Fellow
Participant: Michele Statz, 2021-22 ABF/JPB Foundation Access to Justice Scholar
Participants: Kathryne Young, 2020-21 ABF/JPB Foundation Access to Justice Scholar
Liberal Forms in Illiberal Times [Paper Session]
East Tower, Grand G
Discussant: Elizabeth Mertz, Research Professor
Publishing in Sociolegal Friendly Journals: Meet the Editors and Get Advice on Publishing [Professional Development Panel]
East Tower, Grand D North
Participant: Traci Burch, Research Professor
Research on Jury Decision Making II [Paper Session]
East Tower, Roosevelt 3B
Presenter: Shari Diamond, Research Professor
Presenting “Forepersons: What We Know,” with non-presenting coauthor Mary Rose
Supreme Court Lawyers in Perspective [Paper Session]
East Tower, Roosevelt 1B
Presenter: Christopher Schmidt, Research Professor
Presenting “The American Bar and Challenges to the Authority of the United States Supreme Court”
Nobody’s Boy and His Pals: The Story of Jack Robbins and the Boys’ Brotherhood Republic [Author Meets Reader Session]
East Tower, Roosevelt 1A
Reader: Laura Beth Nielsen, Research Professor
Immigrant Advocacy [Paper Session]
East Tower, Randolph 3
Presenter: Chiara Galli, 2023-24 ABF/JPB Foundation Access to Justice Scholar
Presenting “The Representation Effect for Unaccompanied Children in US Immigration Court”
Miscarriages of Justice [Paper Session]
East Tower, Grand C North
Chair: Isabel Anadon, 2021 ABF/NSF Doctoral Fellow in Law and Inequality
12:45PM to 2:30PM
Mechanisms of Discrimination and Democracy [Paper Session]
East Tower, Monroe 5 Boardroom
Presenter: Kyneshawau Hurd, Postdoctoral Fellow
Presenting “Re-Thinking Discrimination: Towards Implicit Social Dominance”
Theory in Action: New Books in New Legal Realism [New Books in the Field Session]
East Tower, Roosevelt 3A
Chair: Elizabeth Mertz, Research Professor
Law and Language: A Session in Memory of Larry Sloan [Roundtable Session]
East Tower, Grand Suite 2A
Participant: Daniel Chen, 2023-24 Visiting Scholar
2:45PM to 4:30PM
Confronting White Racial Grievance at the Ballot Box: A Conversation on the Final Work of Terry Smith [Roundtable Session]
East Tower, Michigan 1C
Participant: Mario Barnes, Secretary of the Fellows, Fellows of the American Bar Foundation
Sara Dezalay, Lawyering Imperial Encounters: Negotiating Africa’s Relationship with the World Economy (Cabridge University Press, Global Law Series, 2024) [Author Meets Reader Session]
East Tower, Roosevelt 1A
Reader: Bryant Garth, Affiliated Research Professor
2024 New Migration Books [New Books in the Field Session]
East Tower, Grand F
Participant: Shannon Gleeson, 2021-22 ABF/JPB Foundation Access to Justice Scholar
Integrating Access to Justice Across the Curriculum [Professional Development Panel]
East Tower, Grand D North
Participant: Karin Martin, 2021-22 ABF/JPB Foundation Access to Justice Scholar
Participant: Michele Statz, 2021-22 ABF/JPB Foundation Access to Justice Scholar
Participant: Kathryne Young, 2020-21 ABF/JPB Foundation Access to Justice Scholar
4:45PM to 6:30PM
Policing Patients: Treatment and Surveillance on the Frontlines of the Opiod Crisis by Elizabeth Chiarello (Princeton University Press, 2024) [Author Meets Reader Session]
East Tower, Grand C North
Reader: Carol Heimer, Research Professor
US Foreign Policy, Hyper-legality, and the Tools of Totalitarianism [Paper Session]
East Tower, Grand G
Presenter: Jothie Rajah, Research Professor
Presenting “Legislative Imperialism: The 1992 FREEDOM Support Act”
Realist Empirical Studies of Legal Education and Legal Academia [Paper Session]
East Tower, Roosevelt 3A
Presenter: Meghan Dawe, Research Social Scientist
Presenting “The Geography of Opportunity: Mapping Lawyer Careers,” with non-presenting coauthor Robert Nelson, MacCrate Research Chair in the Legal Profession
Presenter: Victor Quintanilla, 2021-22 ABF/JPB Access to Justice Scholar and Affiliated Scholar
Presenting “A Threat in the Classroom: Using Contextual Assessment of Social Identity Experiences to Unveil Cues, Social Identity Contingencies, and Consequences for Minoritized Students in US Law Schools”
Outsider Legal Theories: Entanglements Between Sovereignty, Religion, Authority, Anarchism, Utopian Constitutionalism, and Racial Justice [Paper Session]
East Tower, Grand L
Presenter: Ewurama Okai, Doctoral Fellow
Presenting “Civil Rights Lawyers and the Realities of Imagining New Futures for Racial Justice Litigation”
Presenter: Willa Sachs, 2023-24 Visiting Scholar
Presenting “Taking Rights by Any Means Necessary: The Black Panther Party and the Unlikely Union of Performative Politics, Socialism, and Constitutional Law, 1966-1971”
Critical Police Studies in International Context: The Americas and Europe [Paper Session]
East Tower, Randolph 1B
Presenter: Tyler Wall, 2022 Visiting Scholar
Presenting “Murderous Enthusiasm: On the ‘Exultant Mood’ of Police Sovereignty”
Critical Dialogue on Border and Migration Control Towards the Global North [Roundtable Session]
East Tower, Grand Suite 2A
Chair: Chiara Galli, 2023-24 ABF/JPB Foundation Access to Justice Scholar
Sunday, May 25
8:00AM to 9:45AM
Law and Sexual Violence in Organizations [Paper Session]
East Tower, Michigan Boardroom
Chair and Presenter: Robert Nelson, MacCrate Research Chair in the Legal Profession
Presenting “The Hero and the Monsignor: Law, Sexual Violence, and the Catholic Church,” with non-presenting coauthor Laura Beth Nielson, Research Professor
Presenter: Laura Beth Nielsen, Research Professor
Presenting “Expressive Law & Second-Order Legal Consciousness: Campus Affirmative Consent Policies and Barriers to Norm Change,” with non-presenting coauthors Sara Kadoura, Research Specialist, and Sino Esthappan, American Bar Foundation/Northwestern University Doctoral Fellow in Law and Social Science, and Kris Rosentel
Discussant: Kathryne M. Young, 2020-21 ABF/JPB Access to Justice Scholar
Studying American Legal Scholarship and Law Professors: A Reflexive Discussion [Roundtable Session]
East Tower, Grand F
Participant: Elizabeth Mertz, Research Professor
Participant: Robert Gelles, Doctoral Fellow
Racial Violence and the Law [Paper Session]
East Tower, Grand Suite 1
Chair and Discussant: Isabel Anadon, 2021 ABF/NSF Doctoral Fellow in Law and Inequality
10:00AM to 11:45AM
Relational Legal Consciousness: Concepts, Methods, Challenges, and Future Directions [Paper Session]
East Tower, Grand H
Discussant: Kathryne Young, 2020-21 ABF/JPB Foundation Access to Justice Scholar
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About the American Bar Foundation
The American Bar Foundation (ABF) is the world’s leading research institute for the empirical and interdisciplinary study of law. The ABF seeks to expand knowledge and advance justice through innovative, interdisciplinary, and rigorous empirical research on law, legal processes, and legal institutions. To further this mission the ABF will produce timely, cutting-edge research of the highest quality to inform and guide the legal profession, the academy, and society in the United States and internationally. The ABF’s primary funding is provided by the American Bar Endowment and the Fellows of The American Bar Foundation.