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About the Center

History

Founding Director Philip Selznick, former Boalt Hall Law School Dean Sanford Kadish, and former Acting Director Harry Scheiber.

The Center for the Study of Law and Society (CSLS) was founded in 1961 to foster interdisciplinary empirical research and analysis concerning the actual behavior of legal institutions, legal processes, legal change, and the social consequences of law. Under the initial leadership of Professor Philip Selznick, the Center succeeded in creating a multidisciplinary milieu in which UC Berkeley faculty and graduate students from many schools and departments interacted, along with visiting sociolegal scholars from Europe and other universities in the United States.

As the first university-based center for sociolegal research, Berkeley's CSLS was also instrumental in establishing sociolegal research as a distinct academic discipline. Its affiliated scholars in the 1960s were among the "founding fathers" of the "law and society" movement. Over the years, the Center has been directed by Philip Selznick, Sheldon Messinger, Jerome Skolnick, Harry Scheiber, Malcolm Feeley, and Robert Kagan. The current director is Lauren Edelman.

In the late 1970s, Center scholars initiated Berkeley's Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program, the first and leading interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in sociolegal studies, as well as the Legal Studies Program, the only undergraduate teaching program in sociolegal studies in the U.S. staffed and managed by a school of law. The Center has long been a choice destination for sociolegal scholars from around the world who seek a period of residence at an American university. Commenting on Philip Selznick's nomination for a Clark Kerr Award for Leadership in Higher Education in 1996, Professor Lawrence Friedman of Stanford University, a leading sociolegal historian and former president of the Law and Society Association, wrote:

"The Center for the Study of Law and Society …… is the most significant center in the country -- and probably in the world -- for study and research on the relationship between legal systems and their social systems. It has been an enormous asset to Berkeley; and a magnet for scholars all over the world. There is probably no significant international scholar in this field who has not been at the Center, spent time at the Center, participated in the work of the Center, or passed through the Center; who has drawn from it, learned from it. Its international influence has been incalculable."

CSLS established UC Berkeley's reputation as a leading academic center for research and writing on the "law in context." Today, it remains central to, and symbolizes to the academic world, Berkeley's commitment to and standing in that field.

Center faculty, students, and visiting scholars have conducted scores of projects in the 45 years since the Center was established. Recent and forthcoming books include:

• Lauren Edelman and Mark C. Suchman, editors. Forthcoming 2007.  Legal Lives of Private Organizations. Ashgate.
• Jonathan Simon. Forthcoming 2006. Governing Through Crime: The War on Crime and the Transformation of America 1965-2000. Oxford University Press.  
• Kristin Luker. 2006. When Sex Goes to School:  Warring Views on Sex, and Sex Education, Since the Sixties. W. W. Norton.
• Marianne Constable.  2005.  Just Silences: The Limits and Possibilities of Modern Law. Princeton University Press.
• Tom Ginsburg and Robert A. Kagan, editors. 2005. Institutions and Public Law: Comparative Approaches. Peter Lang.
• Neil J. Diamant, Stanley B. Lubman, and Kevin J. O'Brien, editors. 2005. Engaging the Law in China: State, Society, and Possibilities for Justice. Stanford University Press.
• David D. Caron and Harry N. Scheiber, editors. 2004.  Bringing New Law to Ocean Waters. M. Nijhoff Publishers.
• Neil Gunningham, Robert A. Kagan, and Dorothy Thornton.  2003. Shades of Green: Business, Regulation, Environment.  Stanford University Press.
• Philip Selznick.  2002.  The Communitarian Persuasion. Woodrow Wilson Center Press. Distributed by Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Robert A. Kagan. 2001 Adversarial Legalism: The American Way of Law. Harvard University Press.
• Robert J. MacCoun and Peter Reuter. 2001. Drug War Heresies: Learning from Other Vices, Times, and Places. Cambridge University Press.
• Robert A. Kagan and Lee Axelrad, editors. 2000. Regulatory Encounters: Multinational Corporations and American Adversarial Legalism. University of California Press.
• Harry N. Scheiber, editor. 2000. Law of the Sea: The Common Heritage and Emerging Challenges. Kluwer Law International.
• Robert D. Cooter. 2000. The Strategic Constitution. Princeton University Press.
• Malcolm M. Feeley and Edward L. Rubin. 1999. Judicial Policy Making and the Modern State: How the Courts Reformed America's Prisons. Cambridge University Press.