The Baldy Center facilitates faculty research by providing opportunities for collaboration, supporting individual and group research projects, and sponsoring research forums of various types. Areas of research, working groups, and seminar topics vary from year to year in response to changing faculty interests.

Working Groups

Some of the research activities of the Baldy Center are organized within Working Groups, which are open to any interested UB faculty member. The Working Groups provide a way to encourage informal networking, exchange, and collaboration as well as facilitating more formal research projects, workshops, and conferences. Working Group activities include meeting informally for a discussion of readings, presenting research work-in-progress, hosting visiting speakers, or organizing research workshops. If you would like to participate in the activities of any of the following Working Groups please contact the group convenor:

Asian Law
The Asian Law Working Group investigates Asian legal traditions and cultures in their historical, religious, and institutional contexts. It seeks to contribute to a greater understanding of comparative law and society via intellectual exchange among scholars at UB and around the world.
Convenor: Kristin Stapleton, History, 645-3474, kstaple@buffalo.edu

Children, Families, and the Law
Examines the intersections between children, families and the legal institutions with which they intersect and the relationship between "private family' and "public law." Many activities involve community-based research and involve the wider professional community.
Convenor: Suzanne Tomkins, Law, 645-2103, tomkins@buffalo.edu

ClassCrits
Interested in questions of law and economic inequality arising from within the tradition of critical legal scholarship. Aims to provide an alternative to the predominant discussions of “law and economics” grounded in neoclassical economic theory and its denial of "class."
Convenors: Martha McCluskey, Law, 645-2326, mcclusk@buffalo.edu; Athena Mutua, Law, 645-2873, admutua@buffalo.edu

Comparative Human Rights Law and Practice
Fosters interdisciplinary research on the national and transnational arenas where law and policy intersect with general social phenomena and practices. Also encourages examination of relationships among cultures, economies, and legal norms.
Convenors: Tara Melish, Law, 645-2257, tmelish@buffalo.edu; Claude Welch, Political Science, 645-2251 x417, cwelch@buffalo.edu

Cultural Policy and Diplomacy
Seek to draw together scholars interested in exploring the many facets of the typically under-researched areas of cultural policy and diplomacy. Scholars from the fields of law, political science, arts management, sociology, urban research and cultural tourism will meet on a regular basis to exchange their scholarship and to listen to addresses by visiting speakers.
Convenor: Ruth Bereson, Arts Management Program, 645-2435 x 1088, bereson@buffalo.edu

Environmental Stewardship
This working group brings together the broad range of disciplinary perspectives involved in understanding what environmental stewardship might mean and how it might work. By “environmental stewardship” we mean the complex of social institutions and practices that sustain the capacity of the natural environment to support life over the long term. Key dimensions of environmental stewardship include social norms, policies, laws, organizations, common patterns of behavior, and ways of measuring progress toward sustainability. The working group discusses research and hosts workshops, conferences and debates on environmental stewardship.
Convenors: Errol Meidinger, Law, 645-6692 eemeid@buffalo.edu; Kenneth Shockley, UB Philosophy 645-0145 kes25@buffalo.edu; Joseph Gardella, UB Chemistry 645-1499 gardella@buffalo.edu

European Culture, Society, and Law
A cross-disciplinary focus is adopted to explore contemporary issues of law and social policy related to the European Union and its expansion, changing relationships between European nation-states and the EU, diversity and multiculturalism within European regions and nation-states, and postcolonial legacies.
Convenors: Deborah Reed-Danahay, Anthropology,645-0403,der5@buffalo.edu; Isabel Marcus, Law, 645-2108, imarcus@buffalo.edu

Gender, Law, and Social Policy
Explores the intersections of legal, social, and political constructions of gender and gender-related issues and the implications of these constructions for public policy.
Convenor: Isabel Marcus, Law, 645-2108, imarcus@buffalo.edu

Law and Anthropology
Brings together several scholars who work in this area across the university to examine the intersections of law and anthropology. UB has more anthropologists who work in this area and have degrees in both than any other university in the U.S.
Convenors: Deborah Reed-Danahay, Anthropology, 645-0403,der5@buffalo.edu; Mateo Taussig-Rubbo, Law, 645-5992, taussig@buffalo.edu

Law and Cognitive Science
Focuses on the intersection between Law and Cognitive Science, in particular, how research from Cognitive Science impinges on the nature of evidence. Aims to bring in highly visible cognitive scientists whose research intersects with the Law to give colloquia.
Convenors: Gail Mauner, Psychology, 645-0219, mauner@buffalo.edu; James Beebe, Philosophy, 645-0153, jbeebe2@buffalo.edu

Law, Place and Space
Attempts to identify how law and geography bear upon each other and draw out the points of contrast, support, and complicity, especially with respect to taken-for-granted distinctions between the social and the material, the human and non-human, and what constitutes persons and things. The group attempts to flesh out some spatio-legal relations as those pertain to a range of disciplines: law, geography, American studies, sociology, engineering, urban planning, public health, and anthropology.
Convenors: Irus Braverman, Law, 645-0472, irusb@buffalo.edu Sharmistha Bagchi-Sen, Geography, 645-0478, geosbs@buffalo.edu

Law and Religion
Focuses on the interrelations of law, religion, and society in this and other cultures and interrogates the relationship between law and religion in social groups and institutions.
Convenors: Stephanie Phillips, Law, 645-2201, slp@buffalo.edu; Jeannette Ludwig, Romance Languages & Literature, 645-2191 x1175, jmludwig@buffalo.edu

Law, Religion, and Culture
Focuses on the multi-disciplinary and cross-cultural study of the intersection of law, religion, society and culture. Law and religion are present in all human societies. Law and religion are also cultural products. We seek to understand how these two powerful social and cultural sets of ideas, practices, and institutions have come to be seen as separate and how they interact and have interacted and recombined in diverse ways across space and time. What is distinctive about the program at Buffalo is that it is the very pluralism, openness and contingency of law and religion and their interrelationship that engages a very diverse set of scholars, historians, anthropologists, social theorists, sociologists, and lawyers.
Convenor: Winni Sullivan, Law, 645-2093, wfs2@buffalo.edu

Law and Social Technologies
The goal of this working group is to pursue and promote currently underdeveloped interdisciplinary research on the intersections between law, culture, and technology. Traditional socio-legal scholarship has paid little attention to the complex ways technology both informs and is shaped by different cultural contexts. Conversely, technology studies, where they touch upon law, tend to precede from naive formalists assumptions and rarely engage with empirical or socio-legal scholarship.
Convenor: James Milles, Law, 645-5543, jgmilles@buffalo.edu

Law and Science
The concept of a law of nature, so central to science and thus to philosophy of science, shares a common root with legal history’s natural law theory: the notion of a law as God’s command. This reading group would bring together scholars interested in the history of law and science, taking the concept of a law of nature as the focal point for exploring both shared features of these disciplines' histories and their later divergence.
Convenors: Hylarie Kochiras, Philosophy, 645-0146, kochiras@buffalo.edu; James Bono, History, 645-8423, hischaos@buffalo.edu

Migration Policy and Pluralism
Focuses on law and public policy surrounding international population movement and the rise and functioning of pluralism within ethnically diverse societies. This Working Group seeks the broadest involvement of scholars across disciplines and nation-state specializations.
Convenors: David Gerber, History, 645-2181 x564, dagerber@buffalo.edu; Teresa Miller, Law, 645-2391, tmiller@buffalo.edu

Projecting Law: Law and New Media
Provides a forum in which faculty and graduate students can explore the role of media as a tool to illuminate, reflect upon, and project law and its broad impact upon society.
Convenors: Teresa Miller, Law, 645-2391, tmiller@buffalo.edu; James Milles, Law, 645-2089, jgmilles@buffalo.edu

Racial Justice
Provides a forum for discussion of scholarship on race and inequality, with a particular interest in people’s interaction with racialized landscapes, spaces, and institutions. Building on the tradition of sociolegal studies of “law in action,” the group hopes that close examination of ground-level data will contribute to an understanding of the complex history and current policy regarding racial segregation and structural inequality.
Convenors: Carl Nightingale, American Studies, 645-2546 x 1470, cn6@buffalo.edu; Theresa Runstedtler, American Studies, 645-2546 x 1299, tr23@buffalo.edu

Seeing the Law: Law, Narrative, and Rhetoric, Legal Story Telling, and Performance
The core of the working group will be composed of legal research, writing and trial practice faculty from the Law School. The working group will engage colleagues from other departments in an ongoing conversation about the ways in which theories and pedagogies from their disciplines (most notably, classical and modern rhetoric, narrative theory, cognitive psychology, and performance) inform and enrich the curriculum in the Law School.
Convenors: Johanna Oreskovic, Law, 645-2474, joresk@buffalo.edu; Stephen Paskey, Law, 645-5044, sjpaskey@buffalo.edu; Charles Ewing, Law, 645-2770, cewing@buffalo.edu

Theory
Provides a forum for discussion on moral, political, and legal theoretical matters relating to social structures, institutions, or the norms of interpersonal behavior.
Convenors: Ken Ehrenberg, Philosophy, 645-2444x106, kenneth@buffalo.edu; Guyora Binder, Law, 645-2673, gbinder@buffalo.edu; Ken Shockley, Philosophy, 645-2444x111, kes25@buffalo.edu

If you are interested in creating a new Working Group, please contact Laura Wirth (lawirth2@buffalo.edu) or Errol Meidinger (eemeid@buffalo.edu) at the Baldy Center.

Research Forums

Faculty Seminar Series
The Center's annual or semester-long seminar series are developed around a broad theme that is explored from a variety of perspectives by visiting scholars and UB faculty. Each presentation is followed by remarks from one or two commentators. These seminars are for faculty and graduate students interested in the interdisciplinary study of law and provide an opportunity for investigation of a topic in depth. All faculty, law, and graduate students are welcome to attend the series.

Conferences and Workshops
Scholarly conferences and research workshops have been a mainstay of Baldy activity. The conferences range from policy-oriented debates over community development, prisoners' disabilities, and family law, to more theoretical discussions of democratic and legal institutions, technology and development, or comparative diversity policies. More details on upcoming conferences and workshops are here.

Book Manuscript Workshops
The Baldy Center for Law & Social Policy organizes intensive workshops focused on books about law or legal institutions, or any aspect of law and social policy authored by a UB faculty member. These workshops are designed to be stimulating interdisciplinary discussions that will provide helpful feedback to authors of a draft book manuscript. A small group of interested faculty, including one or two outside specialists, reads and discusses the manuscript with the author. Further details on upcoming and past workshops can be found here.

Visiting Speakers and Scholars
The Baldy Center hosts distinguished speakers as conference participants, as consultants, and as visiting scholars in connection with teaching and scholarship. Upcoming presentations by speakers and visiting scholars are available on the Events Calendar and information about past events is available on the Events Archive.

Faculty Publications

SSRN Buffalo Legal Studies Research Paper Series
In 2005-06 the Baldy Center joined with the UB Law School and moved its working paper series online -- now called the Buffalo Legal Studies Research Paper Series. It is hosted and distributed by SSRN (Social Science Research Network) and provides an international, interdisciplinary audience for the law-related work of UB faculty and visiting scholars.

• Visit the Buffalo Legal Studies
• For free subscription to the Buffalo Legal Studies series, visit http://www.ssrn.com and click on "Subscribe"
• Information on publishing papers in the Buffalo Legal Studies Series, can be downloaded here

An earlier sampling of Baldy faculty publications is available in the Baldy Center's Selected Publications 1995-1999 brochure which is available here