FOUNDED IN 1964
The Law and Society Association was founded in 1964 by Professors Harry Ball, Robert Yegge, and Richard Schwartz. Professor Ball became the first President of LSA and Professor Schwartz served as the first editor of the Association’s journal, the Law & Society Review.
With help from a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation, the first issue of the Review appeared in November 1966. For its first decade, LSA meetings were held in conjunction with the meetings of other major disciplinary associations. The LSA held its first stand-alone national meeting in Buffalo, New York in 1975 and its first annual meeting three years later in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The Executive Office of LSA began at the University of Denver in 1971 before moving to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1987 and then the University of Utah in Salt Lake City in 2012. The Executive Office returned to the campus of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 2018.
VIDEO SERIES
The Center for the Study of Law and Society at the University of California-Berkeley has begun a project to document the intellectual origins of the field of law and society. It has conducted interviews with several founders of the field, most of whom were active in the Law and Society Association.
LSA Presidents
Michele Goodwin
2023-2025
Georgetown Law
Laura Beth Nielsen
2021-2023
Northwestern University
Penelope Andrews
2019-2021
New York Law School
Kim Scheppele
2017-2019
Princeton University
Valerie Hans
2015-2017
Cornell University
Carroll Seron
2013-2015
University of California, Irvine
Michael W. McCann
2011-2013
University of Washington
Laura E. Gómez
2009-2011
University of New Mexico
Richard Lempert
2007-2009
University of Michigan
Malcolm Feeley
2005-2007
University of California, Berkeley
Howard Erlanger
2003-2005
University of Wisconsin
Lauren Edelman
2002-2003
University of California, Berkeley
Lynn Mather
2001-2002
Dartmouth College
Kitty Calavita
2000-2001
University of California, Irvine
Frank Munger
1999-2000
State University of New York, Buffalo
Austin Sarat
1998-1999
Amherst College
David Engel
1997-1998
State University of New York, Buffalo
Carol Greenhouse
1996-1997
Indiana University
Susan Silbey
1995-1996
Wellesley College
Sally Merry
1993-1995
Wellesley College
Joel Handler
1991-1993
University of California, Los Angeles
Richard Abel
1989-1991
University of California, Los Angeles
Felice Levine
1987-1989
National Science Foundation
Stewart Macaulay
1985-1987
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Marc Galanter
1983-1985
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Herbert Jacob
1981-1983
Northwestern University
Lawrence Friedman
1979-1981
Stanford University
Charles Kelso
1977-1979
University of the Pacific
Samuel Krislov
1975-1977
University of Minnesota
Richard Schwartz
1972-1975
State University of New York, Buffalo
Victor Rosenblum
1970-1972
Northwestern University
Robert Yegge
1966-1970
University of Denver
Harry Ball
1964-1965
University of Wisconsin (1st year) & University of Hawai’i