This year’s Law and Society Association (LSA) Annual Meeting, to be held in San Juan, Puerto Rico, from June 1 to 4, will feature presentations from over 30 ABF scholars. LSA’s Annual Meeting presents an unparalleled opportunity for sociolegal scholars to connect and exchange ideas across many disciplines and academic backgrounds.
The theme for this year’s conference is “Separate and Unequal,” which invites attendees to reckon with the United States’ history of colonialism and territorial expansionism through means of the “separate and unequal” doctrine. This doctrine justified the possession of “unincorporated territories,” such as Puerto Rico, and served as the basis for decades of U.S. law and policies implemented to limit full rights to citizenship for persons born in these territories.
Sociolegal scholars invited to present their work at the Annual Meeting represent the field’s premier thought leaders examining the ways in which social, legal, and political structures perpetuate inequalities in the U.S. and worldwide. Session topics include immigration, intellectual property, human trafficking, access to justice, and more.
Below is a list of the ABF Scholars who will be presenting at this year’s meeting:
Thursday, June 1
- Award Ceremony: Presidental Address
- “Relational Rights: A Vision for a Positive and Public Vision of Law and Society” – Laura Beth Nielsen
- Paper Session: Gender and the Legal Profession
- “A Reversed Gender Gap in Chinese Immigrant Lawyers” – Bryant Garth
- Professional Development Panel: Publishing in Socio-Legal Friendly Journals: Meet the Editors and Get Advice on Publishing
- Christopher Schmidt
- Professional Development Panel: Addressing Inequality Issues in the Peer-Reviewed Publishing World
- Christopher Schmidt and Sida Liu (Faculty Fellow)
- Roundtable Session: Access to Justice for Vulnerable and Excluded Populations
- Rebecca Sandefur (Faculty Fellow) and Matthew Burnett (Senior Program Officer)
- Paper Session: Police and Policing: Mapping, Uncovering, Inverting, Recovering
- “Legitimacy-based Policing and the Promotion of Community Vitality” – Tom Tyler (Affiliated Research Professor)
- “Uncovering Police” – Tracey Meares (Affiliated Research Professor)
- Roundtable Session: Access to Civil Justice I: Processes and Institutional Change in State Civil Courts
- Alyx Mark (Affiliated Scholar)
- Paper Session: Grappling with Gender & Gender Identity in the Courts
- Jill Weinberg (Affiliated Scholar)
- Paper Session: Unaccompanied Migrant Children in US Government Custody, 2014 – 2021
- Emily Ryo (Affiliated Scholar)
- Paper Session: Law and Justice in the Rural U.S.
- Kathryne Young (Affiliated Scholar)
- Paper Session: Collateral Consequences and Blurring the Boundaries of Punishment
- “Unfit at Any Speed: The Proliferation of Driver’s License Consequences for Criminal Convictions” – Spencer Headworth (Affiliated Scholar)
- Roundtable Session: Access to Civil Justice II: Best Practices, Innovations, and Interventions in State Civil Courts
- Victor D. Quintanilla (Affiliated Scholar)
- Thematic Panel: Almost Citizens: Health Inequalities
- “The Insufficiency of the Right to Health Approach to Tackle Inequalities: A Political Economy Analysis of the Health Crises in Puerto Rico” – Nylca J. Muñoz (Access to Justice Scholar)
- Paper Session: Detained: The History of US Law, Profit, and Immigrant Detention
- “Detention For-Profit: Privatizing Immigrant Detention Over the Prison Boom and Bust in the United States, 1970-2020” – Isabel Anadon (Doctoral Fellow)
- Paper Session: An End to ICE? : Abolitionist Policies and Converging Discourses on Racism, Citizenship, and Immigrant Detention
- Isabel Anadon (Doctoral Fellow)
- “The Prison and Detention Bust: Mapping the Geography of Prison and Detention Center Closings since 2000” – Victoria Ylizaliturri (SURF, non-presenting coauthor)
- Paper Session: Legal Education and Research
- “The Mechanics of Legal Research” – Alex Reiss-Sorokin (Doctoral Fellow)
Friday, June 2
- Author Meets Reader Session: The Power of the Jury: Transforming Citizens into Jurors
- Shari Seidman Diamond
- International Law and Politics New Books in the Field
- Discounting Life: Necropolitical Law, Culture, and the Long War on Terror – Jothie Rajah
- Author Meets Reader Session: Discounting Life: Necropolitical Law, Culture, and the Long War on Terror
- Jothie Rajah
- Author Meets Reader Session: Understanding Due Process in Non-Criminal Matters. How to Harmonize Procedural Guarantees with the Right to Access to Justice
- Bryant Garth and Alyx Mark (Affiliated Scholar)
- Roundtable Session: Publishing for the Global South: Afronomicslaw & TWAIL Review
- James Thuo Gathii (Neukom Chair)
- Author Meets Reader: The Ghostwriters: Lawyers and the Politics Behind the Judicial Construction of Europe
- Sida Liu (Faculty Fellow)
- Book Introduction Session: New Books in the Field
- Sida Liu (Faculty Fellow)
- New Books in the Field: Immigrants and Refugees Navigating Law, Policy, and Bureaucracy
- Precarious Protections: Unaccompanied Minors Seeking Asylum in the US – Chiara Galli (Access to Justice Scholar)
- Shannon Gleeson (Affiliated Scholar)
- Thematic Panel: Separate and Unequal in Indian Country
- Kirsten Matoy Carlson (Access to Justice Scholar)
- Author Meets Reader Session: Open Hand, Closed Fist: Practices of Undocumented Organizing in a Hostile State
- Shannon Gleeson (Affiliated Scholar)
- Paper Session: Criminal Justice and Technology: Surveillance, Monitoring, and Records
- “Automated Criminal Record Expungement: Challenges and Opportunities” – Sarah E. Lageson (Affiliated Scholar)
- Author Meets Reader Session: Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance
- Sarah E. Lageson (Affiliated Scholar)
- Paper Session: Access to Justice and Legal Empowerment
- “Everyday People, Everyday Law: Access to Justice and Legal Consciousness” – Kathryne Young (Affiliated Scholar)
- Paper Session: Political Narratives, Movements, and Counter-Movements
- Ellen Berrey (Affiliated Scholar)
- Paper Session: Prison Control and Resistance – Panel I, In and After Prison
- Brittany Friedman (Affiliated Scholar)
- Paper Session: Inequalities and Inequities in U.S. Immigration Law
- “Criminalizing Immigrant Work Before ICRA” – Jennifer Chacón (ABF Board Member)
- “Racial Disparities in Crime-Based Removal Proceedings” – Emily Ryo (Affiliated Scholar)
- Paper Session: Personal and Professional Identities in and Out of Law School
- Carole Silver (Affiliated Scholar)
- Paper Session: Law Students’ Success, Sense of Belonging and Well-Being: Empirical Insights for Edi Considerations
- “Anxiety in Law School: The Role of Networks and Implications for Sense of Belonging” – Carole Silver (Affiliated Scholar)
- Author Meets Reader Session: Stacked Decks: Building Inspectors and the Reproduction of Urban Inequality
- Robin Bartram (Affiliated Scholar)
- Memorial Session in Honor of Lauren Edelman
Saturday, June 3
- Paper Session: The Political Economy of Tax Law
- “Nixon’s VAT: The Rise and Fall of the 1970s National Value-added Tax to Fund Education” – Ajay K. Mehrotra
- Paper Session: How Economic Power Shapes Legal Structures, and Vice Versa
- “How Landlords Influence Housing Policy in an Era of Resurgent Tenant Power” – Anna Reosti
- Paper Session: Challenging the Boundaries of Lay Participation in Law
- Shari Seidman Diamond
- Author Meets Reader: Brandon del Pozo’s Police and the State
- Tracey Meares (Affiliated Research Professor)
- Paper Session: Lawyers and State Transformations
- “Crisis as Opportunity: Professional Career Paths at Two Historical Turning Points in Hong Kong”- Sida Liu (Faculty Fellow)
- Paper Session: Experts, Interest Groups and Social Movements in Policy-Making and Law Reform
- “The Devil is in the Details: How Advocates Use the Law to Influence Federal Legislation” – Kirsten Matoy Carlson (Access to Justice Scholar)
- Paper Session: Entrepreneurship and New Firm Governance
- “Law and Entrepreneurship: Sheaves and Gleanings in a Field of Dreams” – Mark Suchman (Incoming Executive Director, 9/1)
- Paper Session: Debt, Low-Income Borrowers, Race, and Human Dignity
- “The Impact of Civil Debt Collection Lawsuits on Communities: Lessons from Consumer Credit Panel Data and Court Records” – Claire Johnson Raba (Access to Justice Scholar)
- Paper Session: Legal Violence, Precarity and Migrant Youth
- “Access to Justice for Unaccompanied Minors in US Immigration Court: Representation Rates across Place and Individual Demographics”- Chiara Galli (Access to Justice Scholar)
- Paper Session: Theorizing Gender and Sexual Freedom
- Jill Weinberg (Affiliated Scholar)
- Paper Session: From Prison Banking to Pay-to-Stay: Asset Seizure and Cost of Incarceration Statutes
- “Civil Lawfare” – Brittany Friedman (Affiliated Scholar)
Sunday, June 4
- Paper Session: Language of Law: Facts, Fictions, Functions, and Fables
- “Jurisdiction and Humanistic Empiricism: On What We Can Know from an Ethnographic Inquiry into Legal Language” – Justin Richland (Faculty Fellow)
- Paper Session: Policing, Race, and Place
- “Cities Across the River: A Du Boisian Analysis of Racism, Inequality, and Police Violence in Mid-Size U.S. Cities” – Rahim Kurwa (Visiting Scholar)
- Paper Session: Addressing Bias in Evidence Rule 609’s Use of Prior Convictions for Impeachment and Questioning “Credibility” Assessments of Witnesses Generally
- “Police Trust, Police Violence and Rule 609” – Jeannine Bell (Incoming Neukom Chair, 9/1)
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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.