American Bar Foundation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Established in 1952, the American Bar Foundation (ABF) is an independent, nonprofit national research institute located in Chicago, Illinois committed to objective empirical research on law and legal institutions. This program of sociolegal research is conducted by an interdisciplinary staff of Research Fellows trained in such diverse fields as law, sociology, psychology, political science, economics, history, and anthropology.
The American Bar Foundation is a resource for lawyers, scholars, and policy makers who seek analyses of the theory and functioning of law, legal institutions, and the legal profession. The Foundation's work is supported by the American Bar Endowment, by The Fellows of the American Bar Foundation, and by grants for particular research projects from private foundations and government agencies.
Contents |
[edit] Areas of Research
[edit] Legal Profession
Urban Lawyers: The New Social Structure of the Bar, a recently published book, reports on the forces that have transformed the urban bar over a twenty-year period.
AUTHORS: John P. Heinz, Robert L. Nelson, Rebecca L. Sandefur and Edward O. Laumann.
After the JD: A Longitudinal Study of Lawyers’ Careers is tracking, for ten years, a national sample of lawyers who passed the bar in 2000.
AUTHORS: Ronit Dinovitzer, Bryant Garth, Robert L. Nelson and Joyce Sterling.
From Law School to Later Life is studying the evolution of lawyers’ careers, particularly differences in career tracks between men and women.
AUTHORS: John Hagan, Sociologist, Fiona Kay and Ronald J. Daniels
Cause Lawyering in Context: 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.
AUTHORS: Laura Beth Nielsen and Catherine Albiston
Legal Services for the Poor: A Supply Side Analysis is mapping the field of pro bono in Chicago to determine how law firms and corporate law departments influence the delivery of legal services to the poor.
AUTHORS: Stephen Daniels and Joanne Martin
Plaintiffs' Lawyers and the Evolution of Tort Law and Practice in Texas is examining the impact of tort reform on lawyers' practices.
AUTHORS: Stephen Daniels and Joanne Martin
Law School Language: Learning to Think Like a Lawyer is a forthcoming book (2005) that draws on transcribed tapes of Contracts classes in eight law schools to report on the process by which law students are reoriented during legal training.
AUTHOR: Elizabeth Mertz
[edit] Law & Globalization
Justice in the Balkans: Prosecuting Crimes of War in the Hague Tribunal is a recent book that documents the role that the Tribunal’s prosecutors played in building the institution’s credibility and visibility.
AUTHORS: John Hagan
A Peace Corps for Lawyers is an historical and empirical study of the ABA’s Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative (CEELI) program and its life-course implications for its voluntary lawyer participants.
AUTHORS: John Hagan and Ron Levi
The Globalization of Insolvency Law-Making is an empirical study of the emerging global norms that have transformed bankruptcy law in developing and transitional societies in Asia.
AUTHORS: Terrence Halliday and Bruce Carruthers
Popular Justice, Communal Violence, and Alternative Policing in the New South Africa is mapping and analyzing the various forms of alternative law enforcement and popular justice that have emerged in South Africa since 1994.
AUTHORS: John Comaroff and Jean Comaroff
Legalization: of Medicine in AIDS Treatment and Research is examining the way in which treatment regimes, in the United States, Africa, and Thailand, have come to be constructed and diffused as a kind of "law."
AUTHOR: Carol Heimer
[edit] Civil Justice
The Civil Jury at Work is using an unprecedented data set of 50 videotaped jury trials along with juror deliberations to evaluate an Arizona reform that allowed jurors to talk about the case among themselves as the trial proceeded and to assess the role of experts, such as engineers or nurses, who serve on the jury.
AUTHORS: Shari Diamond, Neil Vidmar, and Mary Rose
The Social Psychological Role of Subjective Harm in Punishment Judgments is examining the effect of victim impact testimony on sentencing decisions by jurors.
AUTHORS: Janice Nadler and Mary Rose
Public Opinion on the Civil Justice System is investigating how public opinion on civil justice is measured, by whom and for what purposes, and how and why it changes over time.
AUTHOR: Stephen Daniels
[edit] Criminal Justice
Consequences of Lawbreaking in Young People's Lives: Delinquency and Depression in the Transition to Adult Disadvantage is using data on a large national sample of adolescent youth to test a model that considers the causal relationship between delinquency and depression and their linkages to early problems in adulthood.
AUTHOR: John Hagan
The Social and Economic Impact of Roe v. Wade is exploring the social implications of legalized abortion, including the link between liberalized abortion laws and declining crime rates.
AUTHORS: Steven Levitt and John Donohue
Measuring the Impact of Crack Cocaine is developing a statistical index to measure the extent to which crack cocaine can account for adverse trends in many indicators of African American progress during the 1990s.
AUTHORS: Steven Levitt and Roland Fryer
[edit] Social Justice
Understanding the Contribution of Legislation, Social Activism, Markets, and Choice to the Economic Progress of African Americans explores the relationship between legal policies and other factors that determine the wages of African Americans, both historically and currently.
AUTHOR: James Heckman
The Foundation and Application of Disparate Impact Doctrine is examining the legal theory of disparate impact and is questioning empirically whether the concept should be applied to fields such as organ transplantation.
AUTHOR: James Heckman
The Genesis and Development of Employment Discrimination Lawsuits is using data on complaints filed with the EEOC, federal discrimination cases, and interviews to reveal the actual dynamics of employment discrimination disputes.
AUTHORS: Laura Beth Nielsen and Robert Nelson
[edit] Regulation
The Impact of Banks, Regulation, and Taxes on Entrepreneurial Ventures is using confidential census data to examine the effects of government policies and local lending rates on the success or failure of small businesses.
AUTHOR: Austan Goolsbee
My Brother's Keeper is investigating how fiduciaries, who make medical, custodial, financial, and other decisions for those no longer able to do so themselves, exercise their responsibilities.
AUTHORS: Susan Shapiro
[edit] Legal History
The Creation of the American Liberal State explores the role law played in the development of a restructured style of American governance that emerged in the twentieth century.
AUTHOR: William Novak
Suing Mr. Ford: Antisemitism and Hate Speech in Modern America uses a famous libel case involving automaker Henry Ford to explore the history of American antisemitism and its relationship to group libel law.
AUTHOR: Victoria Woeste
Law, Work, and Culture in Early America is examining the legal history of work and labor during the first two centuries of American history.
AUTHOR: Christopher Tomlins
The Supreme Court of the United States: The Pursuit of Justice is a recently published book (2005), written by eighteen collaborating scholars under the auspices of the ABF, that offers a fresh, historical portrait of the U.S. Supreme Court.
AUTHOR: Christopher Tomlins
