Collaborative Research Networks
Organizers
Riaz Tejani and Jeffrey Omari
For many decades, the law-and-society movement has served as a vibrant meeting point for scholars interested in empirical research on law. Despite this success, LSA continues to face challenges in penetrating the worlds of legal scholarship and law schools. Building on the continued relevance of classical legal realism to theory, method, and practice, New Legal Realism offers a framework for contemporary LSA scholars to situate and coordinate diverse and innovative projects. As part of the New Legal Realist effort, this CRN focuses explicitly on supporting sociolegal scholarship within the legal academy, while also encouraging empirical researchers to take legal logics seriously. Building on the LSA tradition, scholars involved in this CRN work with the full range of available empirical methods – qualitative and quantitative, ethnographic and statistical. Our goal is to encourage a truly interdisciplinary approach to researching law “in action” and “in books.”
More extensive discussion of these ideas, and also links to further resources can be found at www.newlegalrealism.org