• Affiliated Research Professor
Joint Appointment
Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus
UCI Law School
Education
Ph.D., European University Institute
J.D., Stanford Law School

Bryant Garth

  • Affiliated Research Professor
ABF Researcher

Bryant Garth (he/him) is a Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus at UCI Law School, where he codirects the Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession. He also served as UCI Law School’s Interim Deafor the 2021-22 academic year. Previously, Garth served as Interim Executive Director of the ABF from 2022 to 2023, Dean of Southwestern Law School from 2005 until 2012, Executive Director of the American Bar Foundation from 1990 to 2004, and Dean of the Indiana University-Bloomington School of Law from 1986 to 1990.

Garth’s scholarship focuses on the legal profession, the sociology of law, and globalization. Two of his books coauthored with Yves Dezalay, Dealing in Virtue (University of Chicago Press, 1996) and Asian Legal Revivals (University of Chicago Press, 2010), were awarded the Herbert Jacob Book Prize from the Law and Society Association for the best books in the field of Law and Society published that year. He also served as coeditor of the Journal of Legal Education from 2011 to 2014.

Garth is on the Executive Coordinating Committee of the American Bar Foundation’s After the J.D. project, the first longitudinal study of the legal profession, and chairs the advisory committee of the Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE).

Research Focus

The legal profession, dispute resolution, and internationalization. The topics intersect around the question of how internationalization—seen as the import and export of ideas, technologies, approaches, resources, and hierarchies—affects the position and importance of law in regulating the economy and the state; and the changing role of the legal profession in the United States.

Selected Work