On to Lisbon: Liminal Moments in Law and Society
David Trubek
University of Wisconsin-Madison
https://law.wisc.edu/profiles/dmtrubek
In their excellent essay on the early history of the Law and Society field, Conversations in Law and Society: Oral Histories of the Emergence and Transformation of the Movement[1], Morrill, Edelman, Morrill, Fang and Greenspan draw on oral interviews at the Berkeley Center for Law and Society (CLSA) to trace the early years of LSA.
Reviewing talks with the founding generation, the authors show how, amidst the political and cultural turmoil of the 1960s, disparate strands of new thinking about law in the legal academy, social sciences, and humanities evolved into a new academic enterprise.
In that liminal moment in the Sixties, when existing structures in the law and universities were being challenged and new legal and intellectual possibilities mooted, a small group of scholars from several disciplines banded together to create the Law and Society Association and turn it into the working hub of an interdisciplinary field.
Perhaps we are at another liminal moment. I say that because of a recent event I attended--virtually, of course. On Monday October 19, 2020 ABraSD, the Brazilian Sociology of Law Association, held its annual meeting. The conference, attended online by over 1000 people in Brazil, started with two panels that reflected the global spread of the field. In the first, Former LSA President Kim Lane Scheppele described the internationalization of LSA with almost half the members and presenters at annual meetings coming from outside the US. This was followed by discussions of the state of the field around the world from representatives of the Asian LSA, The Australia-New Zealand LSA, the Argentine Sociology of Law group, and the Research Committee on the Sociology of Law.
The second panel involved presentation of emerging plans for the next LSA International Meeting to be held in Lisbon in 2022 and co-sponsored by FICA, the Lisbon Forum on International Coordination and Advice. FICA was set up to bring together all Lisbon sponsoring associations. The Founders, in addition to LSA, are
• Research Committee on the Sociology of Law
• Asian Law and Society Association
• African Law and Society Network
• Socio-Legal Studies Association UK
• Canadian Law and Society Association
• Japanese Association of the Sociology of Law
• Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand
• Brazilian Network on Empirical Legal Studies (REED)
• Brazilian Association for the Sociology of Law (ABraSD)
· Sociology of Law Section, Portuguese Association of Sociology
The ground-breaking panels at the ABraSD event started a new era of global socio-legal collaboration. It brought many FICA members together, outlined the nature of socio-legal studies in many parts of the world, and described plans for Lisbon including creation of 40 LSA-sponsored International Research Collaboratives. These IRCs, made up of scholars from several counties and disciplines, will conduct new research and organize panels for Lisbon.
The Brazilian event itself was proof of the spread of the socio-legal idea. Fifteen years ago there was no national socio-legal organization in Brazil. Now there are two—AbraSD and the Brazilian Network for Empirical Research on Law (REED)—with a combined membership of upwards of 2000. The event also showed the possibilities of new technologies. 1000 people in their homes and offices in Brazil listened to scholars from groups that span half the world.
Once again we are in a period of turmoil and change in culture, politics, technology, and international organization. Democracies are being challenged; world order is unsettle; new ideas are being mooted; and new intellectual, communication, and organizational possibilities emerging. More South-South connections are developing while North-South links expand.
As the ABraSD event shows, our field is on the move again but now it is moving on a global scale: perhaps a new generation of leaders will seize the opportunity to create a truly global field and many years hence scholars at Berkeley’s CLSA –or São Paulo’s FGV and USP-- will do a similar essay on the 2020s!
