Center in Law, Society and Culture

The Center in Law, Society and Culture brings together UC Irvine faculty and graduate students who share interests in law, society, and culture, broadly defined. Issues of interest to center affiliates include race, law and justice; law and literature; critical legal theory; legal consciousness; law and space; legal philosophy, culture and policing; the interaction of local and international legal cultures; globalization; migration; knowledge production; law, science, and society; and law and history. The center sponsors Symposia in Critical Legalities, discussions of participants' work, workshops, colloquia, a graduate fellows program, and other activities that foster intellectual dialogue relating to issues in law, society, and culture.

Conference: Paradoxes of Race, Law and Inequality in the United States
Co-sponsored by the Center in Law, Society and Culture and Law & Society Review
May 2-3, 2008
In the 1950s and 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement reinvigorated socio-legal scholarship and raised new questions about the place of law in social, political, economic and cultural life. Today, scholars approach the analysis of race, law and inequality in the United States in a very different socio-political climate. There have been dramatic changes in immigration law, transformations in labor markets within the United States and overseas; skyrocketing concerns over security threats, increased use of racial profiling, new forms of incarceration, and increased fears of gang warfare. The paradoxes of race, law and inequality are at least as profound as they were at the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. To explore these issues in greater depth, a conference will be held at UCI in spring 2008 and a special symposium of the Review will follow in 2009.
For additional information, please go to: https://socialecology.uci.edu/research/clsc/conferences

Critical Legalities Symposia
The Center in Law, Society and Culture holds quarterly Critical Legalities Symposia. By "critical legalities," we refer to (1) ways that law is critical to cutting edge theory, (2) new forms of analysis, and (3) examinations of forms of law that undergird established institutions, structures, and cultural phenomena. Symposia focus on a particular theme, feature presentations by UCI faculty and outside speakers, and include a workshop structured around central issues. Themes for 2007-2008 include youth and transnational policing, law and temporality, and the spring 2008 conference on law, race, and inequality.

Center Meetings
We hold 2-3 center meetings per year. At these meetings, we read and discuss a recent publication or work-in-progress of one of our members. The author briefly describes and contextualizes his or her work, and then another center member (typically, from a different discipline) serves as discussant, providing comments and raising questions. The discussant’s comments are followed by a more general discussion. These meetings are open to other interested faculty and students who are not members of our center, and occur over lunch.

Other Activities
The Center in Law, Society and Culture also sponsors colloquia, workshops, and a graduate fellows program.

Funding for the center's 2007-2008 activities has been generously provided by the Department of Criminology, Law and Society, the School of Humanities, the School of Social Ecology, the School of Social Sciences and the Office of Research.

For more information, contact the Center in Law, Society and Culture's director, Susan Coutin at scoutin@uci.edu or (949) 824-1447; or our Administrative Coordinator, Sharyn Danielson at danielss@uci.edu or (949) 824-9803.