6.17.25 |
Call for Papers: 2026 Poverty Law Conference: Scholarship, Pedagogy, and Community in a Time of Attacks on the Vulnerable, USC Gould School of Law, Friday, Feb. 20, and Saturday, Feb. 21, 2026.
This national event brings together scholars, educators, and advocates whose work focuses on poverty, inequality, and access to justice. The conference will feature paper presentations, roundtable discussions about teaching and advocacy, and opportunities to build community across disciplines and institutions. The deadline for submissions is Aug. 1, 2025. For questions, please contact Clare Pastore ([email protected]) or Ariel Jurow Kleiman ([email protected]). |
6.17.25 |
Call for Papers: Fall 2025 Law & Rurality Workshop (Virtual)
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The Rural Reconciliation Project at the University of Nebraska College of Law, along with the University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law, will host the annual Law & Rurality Workshop online this fall. This workshop is for scholars whose work engages with law and its relation to rural people and places.
You can follow their workshop page for most up-to-date information, or check out the Call for Proposals. Abstracts and other expressions of interest, as outlined in the CFP, should be submitted directly to Hannah Haksgaard. More information about all of the Project’s Programs here. |
5.13.25 |
It's almost time for the LSA annual meeting in Chicago! We're excited to announce that this is a record-breaking year for CRN 39 panels and workshops (14!). Below are the events related to Everyday Legality and Access to Justice:
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Thursday, May 22:
Innovative Research on Access to Civil Justice I: Challenges and Collaborative Solutions
8:00–9:45 am, East Tower, Grand H (paper session)
In this panel, early career scholars affiliated with the American Bar Foundation's Access to Justice Initiative will present research exploring the experiences of vulnerable populations as they navigate traditional legal institutions and their broader social and political contexts. These papers explore persistent barriers, such as language access and incarceration, while highlighting innovative solutions like multidisciplinary partnerships and community-based advice. With a comparative focus, this panel offers important insights into how access to civil justice can address inequality and alleviate poverty in the United States.
Innovative Research on Access to Civil Justice II: Justice, Inequality, and Privacy
10:00–11:45 am, East Tower, Grand H (paper session)
In this panel, early career scholars affiliated with the American Bar Foundation's Access to Justice Initiative will present research exploring the experiences of vulnerable populations as they navigate traditional legal institutions and their broader social and political contexts. The papers contribute to our understanding of access to civil justice and its critical role in alleviating poverty, using innovative empirical approaches to examine the systemic barriers faced by marginalized groups.
Uncovering the New Legal Playbook of Authoritarianism: Sites, Methodologies, and Actors
12:45–2:30 pm, East Tower, Grand F (paper session)
Authoritarianism has long captivated legal scholars, with autocratic legalism being the dominant framework for understanding how strongmen manipulate laws to centralise power and suppress dissent. However, this approach struggles to explain how authoritarianism operates closer to the ground. From the capture of South Africa's public institutions under Jacob Zuma to the assaults on Muslims by India's BJP party, the weaponisation of law is far more common and decentralised now than before. This panel, featuring six fieldwork-based papers indicting law's role in policing love, speech, borders, land, and freedom of association in India, illuminates the methodologies, temporalities, sites, and actors engaged in crafting this new authoritarian dynamic. The panel discussion hopes to unlock a new grammar to capture this breed of authoritarianism.
Friday, May 23:
Information, Regulation, and Surveillance: Can Better Records Management Lead to More Equality?
8:00–9:45 am, East Tower, Grand H (paper session)
This panel explores questions of transparency and accountability across a range of contexts in the US and the UK, from public records laws to perceptions of surveillance. Each researcher on this panel asks fundamental questions about what we should know about each other--and what various kinds of legal and regulatory systems should know about us. What possibilities for equality lie in the way we handle information and records?
Novel Perspectives on the Legal Profession
10:00–11:45 am, East Tower, Grand H (paper session)
In this panel, scholars address a range of questions related to the legal profession, including the way the legal profession presents itself to the public, the ways it tries to help people by pro bono work and expertise, and the constraints the profession places on access to justice given traditional conceptions of its image and commitment to serving to the public.
Boundaries and Borders in the Law
12:45–2:30 pm, East Tower, Grand H (paper session)
The law creates, depends upon, and deepens all kinds of borders, boundaries, and distinctions in the social world. This panel examines when and how these boundaries are constructed by, within, and without, the law. What possibilities do we have for meaning-making that transcends these barriers, through empowering practices ranging from the aesthetic to the ritualistic to the philosophical?
Common Place of Administrative Legitimacy
2:45–4:30 pm, East Tower, Grand H (paper session)
Democracy depends on bureaucracy to effectuate the legislative decisions embodied in statutes. But around the world, the legitimacy of administrative action is under stress, and under suspicion. This panel investigates administrative legitimacy from a range of perspectives. Panel papers suggest that divergences between popular and technocratic understandings of administrative legitimacy can cast doubt on democracy itself; that sub regulatory norms can legitimize, and be legitimized by, more formal governance; that administrators and those they regulate co-construct legitimacy by shifting between input and output models; and that agency action can be more democratically legitimated than court decisionmaking. Panel papers encompass empirical and theoretical methodologies and focus on Taiwan, Singapore, Germany, and the US.
Enforcement Decisions
4:45–6:30 pm, East Tower, Grand H (paper session)
The everyday enaction of laws requires decision-making by a wide variety of enforcers. This panel brings together researchers who examine enforcement decisions in a variety of contexts, including the factors that affect the investigation of crime, the prosecution of charges, and the enforcement of legal orders. How should we think about the consequences of overarching patterns in legal decision-making?
Saturday, May 24:
Lay Participation and Civil Justice
8:00–9:45 am, East Tower, Grand H (roundtable session)
Lay people participate in civil justice in a range of ways -- as jurors, as in-court advocates, as advisors and negotiators, as adjudicators, and more. This panel explores some of the key types of justice work that lay people do.
Integrating Access to Justice Across the Curriculum
2:45–4:30 pm, Grand E North (professional development panel)
Access to Justice is increasingly recognized as a multidisciplinary sociolegal field. Extending theoretical work on dispute processing and legal consciousness and empirical work on legal needs, the effect of legal representation, and responsive behavior, the field illustrates that the lack of access to justice can drive inequality, undermine foundational guarantees of the rule of the law, and threaten democracy. Yet despite the implications for core topics in legal scholarship and the social sciences, integrating this field into existing curricula can be challenging. In this professional development session, leading access to justice scholars will reflect on their experiences incorporating access to justice in a diverse array of institutional settings: law, policy, and medical schools as well as political science and law and society departments.
Legal Rights, Legal Ambiguity, and Legal Consciousness
2:45–4:30 pm, East Tower, Grand H (paper session)
The subjective construction of legal entitlements is a foundational area of law and society research. This panel's participants hail from a variety of substantive areas, including sociology, law, philosophy, and political science. Through each of these lenses, they examine the question of how people understand and enact their rights, how they resist the erosion of their legal rights, and how they understand their own identities vis-a-vis the state.
Legal Vulnerability and Systemic Inequality
4:45–6:30 pm, East Tower, Grand H (paper session)
This panel employs a diverse array of disciplinary and methodological approaches to examine inequalities in the legal system, the ways social and legal vulnerabilities overlap, and offer ways that new perspectives can be leveraged to more fully actualize rights. Panelists will share a broad range of projects offering theoretical and empirical insights into how we might think about the relationship between the law's putative goal of furthering equality and the on-the-ground realities of how legal processes play out for different groups.
Sunday, May 25:
Race-Consciousness After SFFA
8:00–9:45 am, East Tower, Grand H (paper session)
The Supreme Court's decision in SFFA v. Harvard impacted more than just the consideration of race in college admissions. Rather, the decision also threw into question race-conscious initiatives and commitments adopted in K-12 schools, public and private workplaces, the regulatory state, and even private charitable organizations. This panel will consider this changing landscape, including the future of standardized testing, the impact of anti-Asian animus in K-12 school challenges, colorblindness and its impact on the administrative state, the "moral cloaking" of the Roberts Court, and the rise of reverse discrimination claims as a white racial project.
Relational Legal Consciousness: Concepts, Methods, Challenges, and Future Directions
10:00–11:45 am, East Tower, Grand H (paper session)
This panel scrutinizes the 'relational turn' in legal consciousness research. Rather than analyzing legal consciousness individualistically, a growing number of studies conceptualize legal consciousness as a collaborative phenomenon. These studies show how people's thoughts and actions reflect their interactions with other individuals, groups and institutions. Central to this approach is the idea that a person's beliefs about the law are influenced not only by his own experience, but also by his understanding of others' experiences with, and beliefs about, the law. Drawing on case studies from Taiwan, China, Vietnam, the United States, Brazil, Denmark and Poland, the papers in this panel will discuss different concepts, methods and challenges in studying relational legal consciousness and will explore possible directions for future research.
Innovative Research on Access to Civil Justice I: Challenges and Collaborative Solutions
8:00–9:45 am, East Tower, Grand H (paper session)
In this panel, early career scholars affiliated with the American Bar Foundation's Access to Justice Initiative will present research exploring the experiences of vulnerable populations as they navigate traditional legal institutions and their broader social and political contexts. These papers explore persistent barriers, such as language access and incarceration, while highlighting innovative solutions like multidisciplinary partnerships and community-based advice. With a comparative focus, this panel offers important insights into how access to civil justice can address inequality and alleviate poverty in the United States.
Innovative Research on Access to Civil Justice II: Justice, Inequality, and Privacy
10:00–11:45 am, East Tower, Grand H (paper session)
In this panel, early career scholars affiliated with the American Bar Foundation's Access to Justice Initiative will present research exploring the experiences of vulnerable populations as they navigate traditional legal institutions and their broader social and political contexts. The papers contribute to our understanding of access to civil justice and its critical role in alleviating poverty, using innovative empirical approaches to examine the systemic barriers faced by marginalized groups.
Uncovering the New Legal Playbook of Authoritarianism: Sites, Methodologies, and Actors
12:45–2:30 pm, East Tower, Grand F (paper session)
Authoritarianism has long captivated legal scholars, with autocratic legalism being the dominant framework for understanding how strongmen manipulate laws to centralise power and suppress dissent. However, this approach struggles to explain how authoritarianism operates closer to the ground. From the capture of South Africa's public institutions under Jacob Zuma to the assaults on Muslims by India's BJP party, the weaponisation of law is far more common and decentralised now than before. This panel, featuring six fieldwork-based papers indicting law's role in policing love, speech, borders, land, and freedom of association in India, illuminates the methodologies, temporalities, sites, and actors engaged in crafting this new authoritarian dynamic. The panel discussion hopes to unlock a new grammar to capture this breed of authoritarianism.
Friday, May 23:
Information, Regulation, and Surveillance: Can Better Records Management Lead to More Equality?
8:00–9:45 am, East Tower, Grand H (paper session)
This panel explores questions of transparency and accountability across a range of contexts in the US and the UK, from public records laws to perceptions of surveillance. Each researcher on this panel asks fundamental questions about what we should know about each other--and what various kinds of legal and regulatory systems should know about us. What possibilities for equality lie in the way we handle information and records?
Novel Perspectives on the Legal Profession
10:00–11:45 am, East Tower, Grand H (paper session)
In this panel, scholars address a range of questions related to the legal profession, including the way the legal profession presents itself to the public, the ways it tries to help people by pro bono work and expertise, and the constraints the profession places on access to justice given traditional conceptions of its image and commitment to serving to the public.
Boundaries and Borders in the Law
12:45–2:30 pm, East Tower, Grand H (paper session)
The law creates, depends upon, and deepens all kinds of borders, boundaries, and distinctions in the social world. This panel examines when and how these boundaries are constructed by, within, and without, the law. What possibilities do we have for meaning-making that transcends these barriers, through empowering practices ranging from the aesthetic to the ritualistic to the philosophical?
Common Place of Administrative Legitimacy
2:45–4:30 pm, East Tower, Grand H (paper session)
Democracy depends on bureaucracy to effectuate the legislative decisions embodied in statutes. But around the world, the legitimacy of administrative action is under stress, and under suspicion. This panel investigates administrative legitimacy from a range of perspectives. Panel papers suggest that divergences between popular and technocratic understandings of administrative legitimacy can cast doubt on democracy itself; that sub regulatory norms can legitimize, and be legitimized by, more formal governance; that administrators and those they regulate co-construct legitimacy by shifting between input and output models; and that agency action can be more democratically legitimated than court decisionmaking. Panel papers encompass empirical and theoretical methodologies and focus on Taiwan, Singapore, Germany, and the US.
Enforcement Decisions
4:45–6:30 pm, East Tower, Grand H (paper session)
The everyday enaction of laws requires decision-making by a wide variety of enforcers. This panel brings together researchers who examine enforcement decisions in a variety of contexts, including the factors that affect the investigation of crime, the prosecution of charges, and the enforcement of legal orders. How should we think about the consequences of overarching patterns in legal decision-making?
Saturday, May 24:
Lay Participation and Civil Justice
8:00–9:45 am, East Tower, Grand H (roundtable session)
Lay people participate in civil justice in a range of ways -- as jurors, as in-court advocates, as advisors and negotiators, as adjudicators, and more. This panel explores some of the key types of justice work that lay people do.
Integrating Access to Justice Across the Curriculum
2:45–4:30 pm, Grand E North (professional development panel)
Access to Justice is increasingly recognized as a multidisciplinary sociolegal field. Extending theoretical work on dispute processing and legal consciousness and empirical work on legal needs, the effect of legal representation, and responsive behavior, the field illustrates that the lack of access to justice can drive inequality, undermine foundational guarantees of the rule of the law, and threaten democracy. Yet despite the implications for core topics in legal scholarship and the social sciences, integrating this field into existing curricula can be challenging. In this professional development session, leading access to justice scholars will reflect on their experiences incorporating access to justice in a diverse array of institutional settings: law, policy, and medical schools as well as political science and law and society departments.
Legal Rights, Legal Ambiguity, and Legal Consciousness
2:45–4:30 pm, East Tower, Grand H (paper session)
The subjective construction of legal entitlements is a foundational area of law and society research. This panel's participants hail from a variety of substantive areas, including sociology, law, philosophy, and political science. Through each of these lenses, they examine the question of how people understand and enact their rights, how they resist the erosion of their legal rights, and how they understand their own identities vis-a-vis the state.
Legal Vulnerability and Systemic Inequality
4:45–6:30 pm, East Tower, Grand H (paper session)
This panel employs a diverse array of disciplinary and methodological approaches to examine inequalities in the legal system, the ways social and legal vulnerabilities overlap, and offer ways that new perspectives can be leveraged to more fully actualize rights. Panelists will share a broad range of projects offering theoretical and empirical insights into how we might think about the relationship between the law's putative goal of furthering equality and the on-the-ground realities of how legal processes play out for different groups.
Sunday, May 25:
Race-Consciousness After SFFA
8:00–9:45 am, East Tower, Grand H (paper session)
The Supreme Court's decision in SFFA v. Harvard impacted more than just the consideration of race in college admissions. Rather, the decision also threw into question race-conscious initiatives and commitments adopted in K-12 schools, public and private workplaces, the regulatory state, and even private charitable organizations. This panel will consider this changing landscape, including the future of standardized testing, the impact of anti-Asian animus in K-12 school challenges, colorblindness and its impact on the administrative state, the "moral cloaking" of the Roberts Court, and the rise of reverse discrimination claims as a white racial project.
Relational Legal Consciousness: Concepts, Methods, Challenges, and Future Directions
10:00–11:45 am, East Tower, Grand H (paper session)
This panel scrutinizes the 'relational turn' in legal consciousness research. Rather than analyzing legal consciousness individualistically, a growing number of studies conceptualize legal consciousness as a collaborative phenomenon. These studies show how people's thoughts and actions reflect their interactions with other individuals, groups and institutions. Central to this approach is the idea that a person's beliefs about the law are influenced not only by his own experience, but also by his understanding of others' experiences with, and beliefs about, the law. Drawing on case studies from Taiwan, China, Vietnam, the United States, Brazil, Denmark and Poland, the papers in this panel will discuss different concepts, methods and challenges in studying relational legal consciousness and will explore possible directions for future research.
10.4.24 |
Despite the fact that we've been going strong as a CRN, our web presence has been somewhat... lacking for the past three years. All of that's about to change. We have TWO huge announcements.
First, we have a NEW NAME! By popular demand, Everyday Legality is now Everyday Legality and Access to Justice! We are very, very excited to bring more access to justice researchers into CRN 39, and particularly to create a broader community. Second, we have TWO NEW CO-LEADERS! Alyx Mark of Wesleyan University and Daria Fisher Page of the University of Iowa will be leading the CRN alongside Katie Young, who--frankly--could really use the infusion of energy and new ideas. Stay tuned for more. We have a whole lot planned for you! |
5.16.21 |
So proud to be announcing the eleven sessions that CRN 39 is sponsoring and co-sponsoring this year! Here's the info; just click on each session for more information (listed below in chronological order).
THURSDAY, MAY 27:
FRIDAY, MAY 28:
SATURDAY, MAY 29:
SUNDAY, MAY 30: Hope to see you at several of these fantastic sessions! |
6.1.20 |
The Everyday Legality CRN had its inaugural panel at the (virtual) annual meeting of the Law & Society Association this year. The panel, The Police and the People: Everyday Legality, Legal Consciousness, and The Relationship Between Self and State, featured research by Erez Garnai, Fran Buntman and Tifenn Drouaud, and Ryan Steel.
Additionally, we sponsored a roundtable session organized by Alyx Mark, Access to Justice and Everyday Life: New Research on Individuals' Experiences With the Law and Legal Institutions, which included work by Jeanne Charn Bellow, Shannon Gleeson, Veronica Horowitz, Arianne Renan Barzilay, and Emily Taylor Poppe. |