ÿþ FALL 2009 VOL. 15 NO. 2 PRO BONO NOTES FROM THE CHAIR Dear Division Members, I am writing these notes the day after the historic vote in the House of Representatives to pass a national health insurance bill. The bill is now poised to go to the Senate, where it will likely meet stronger opposition than it faced in the lower house. Nevertheless, I believe this bill marks an important turning point in an ongoing fight for social justice and equality in the United States. The bill may be flawed, as many claim, but it is nevertheless an important step towards providing health care coverage for millions of uninsured Americans. As social scientists interested in law and society, this event illustrates a turning point in our recent history and can be viewed, at least on one level, as a step towards using the law to improve society. The New Deal and Great Society decades were crucial periods when the law was used to create social programs aimed at promoting social and economic equality, in recent years many of these programs have been turned back or even eliminated. The step towards a national health care plan, passed only months after Obama took office, will hopefully be the first move towards an increase in the development and passage social policies aimed at helping Americans improve the quality of their lives. Ironically, the day before the vote to pass a national health care plan, the media reported that the unemployment rate had reached 10.2 percent in October 2009. An article in The New York Times reported that this was the first time, in 26 years, that the unemployment rate had reached the double-digits, and, the article noted,  it suddenly seemed possible that the nation might yet confront the worst joblessness since the Great Depression. A national health care plan is a crucial for creating a government concerned about the social welfare of its citizens, but, at the same time, employment programs must also be promoted by our lawmakers. For social scientists, we are all aware of declining number of full-time positions in the social sciences. In particular, those of us on the job market or working as adjuncts are all profoundly and personally affected by the larger economic reality which is hurting colleges and universities in a particular way. Full-time faculty teaching lines are being cut back, and many adjunct posts are being eliminated. Enrollment declines are happening at many schools because of economic hardships and changes in financial aid policies and endowments. Many private colleges have even done away with need-blind admissions during the past two years  a change that has occurred quietly, with very little publicity, limited critical analysis, and no outrage or protest. Hopefully, the Law and Society Division can help by serving as a gateway for job networking. It is important to note that if you know of any full-time or adjunct positions at your institutions, please send them to our newsletter editor Michael Smyth (smyth@susqu.edu). Also, please notify Michael if you are having conferences or events at your institutions that might be of interest to our members  our newsletter is a perfect (and free) place to post calls for papers! This year, I am sure that topics related these social and economic changes will be addressed at our annual meeting. The annual meeting is scheduled for August 13  15, in Atlanta, Georgia. The theme of the meeting is social justice work, with a focus on the perspectives and methods of activist scholars. The deadline for submission this year is January 31, 2010, and I hope we have a record number of submissions. Sessions sponsored (and co-sponsored) by our division for the 2010 meeting include the following: Families and Criminal Justice Crime, Drugs and Social Policy; Law & Sexuality; Law & Education; Legal Issues & the Environment; Justice for the Marginalized; Law & the Workplace; Gender, Race, Class & Law Social Justice and Harm. Please submit a proposal to at least one of our sessions. I hope to see you all this year at our annual meeting, and I am sure that many of us will be inspired to submit papers based on the recent upheavals in social and public policy. In solidarity, Emily Horowitz Department of Sociology, St. Francis College Chair, Law & Society Division PS: I would like to thank Mary Nell Trautner for her incredible help as vice-chair, and Lloyd Klein for all his help during my transition to chair. Also, I would like to Michael Smyth for editing this newsletter! ____________________________ SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS 60TH ANNUAL MEETING SOCIAL JUSTICE WORK AUGUST 13-15 2010 SHERATON ATLANTA HOTEL 165 COURTLAND ST NE ATLANTA, GA _____________________________ CALL FOR PAPERS: 60TH SSSP ANNUAL MEETING Deadline for submission of papers/abstracts to session organizers is midnight (EST) on January 31, 2010. _____________________________ BE BOLD! LEAD THE DIVISION! Law and Society Division CALL FOR NOMINATIONS The Law and Society Division is currently soliciting nominations for Division Chair and Vice-Chair Please submit nominations by February 15, 2010 to Emily Horowitz (ehorowitz@saintfranciscollege.edu) SELF NOMINATIONS ARE ENCOURAGED! ______________________________ ANNOUNCEMENTS In an exciting development, The Spangenberg Group has joined the Administration of Justice Department s Center for Justice, Law and Society (CJLS). Under this exciting new arrangement, CJLS has created The Spangenberg Project, which offers research, consulting, and technical assistance on issues of access to justice and indigent defense. In addition to The Spangenberg Project, CJLS has won a new grant from the National Institute of Justice to study the sources of wrongful convictions. The Center for Justice, Law and Society links top social scientists with policymakers and practitioners in law, judicial administration and legal development. CJLS faculty and students are drawn from multiple disciplines, all brought together by a common interest in making academe more useful to practitioners and enriching academic research with the experience of practice. The Administration of Justice Department is also home to the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy, the Center for Justice, Leadership, & Management, and, the soon-to-be, Advancing Correctional Excellence Center. - Danielle Rudes, George Mason University ______________________________– NOTE FROM THE EDITOR Dear Members, In my capacity as Editor of Pro Bono, I endeavor to produce a newletter that is worthy of the name. To that end, I am soliciting Division members help. Please take the time to send newsworthy items of interest regarding promotions, tenure status, new jobs, books, new publications of note, grants, awards, etc., etc. Additionally, as the Chair noted, we will be pleased to post announcements of tenure-track and non-tenure-track positions available in your departments. In short, if you have any information to share, I will greatly appreciate it if you will send it along for publication in Pro Bono. Please send any contributions for the newsletter to the Editor, Michael Smyth, at smyth@susqu.edu. All contributors will be nominated for sainthood. ______________________________ Student Paper Competition Deadline: 4/1/10  The Law and Society Division annually gives the Alfred R. Lindesmith Award to the best paper that is law-related and written by one or more untenured faculty and/or graduate student(s) and has not been accepted for publication prior to the April 1 deadline. We welcome nominations, including self-nominations for papers that meet these criteria. Please e-mail papers to: Dr. Reza Hasmath, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, reza.hasmath@utoronto.ca. The winner will receive a plaque and a ticket to the SSSP awards banquet. ______________________________ This is the first installation in what we hope will be an annual event in Pro Bono. In the columns that follow, we feature dissertation abstracts from current and recent graduate student members of the Law and Society Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. The abstracts are featured in no particular order. DISCORD AND AMBIGUITY WITHIN YOUTH CRIME AND JUSTICE DEBATES Michael Adorjan, McMaster University, Ontario Canada This dissertation traces debates about youth crime and justice in Canada.  On a substantive level, I ask how the social problem of youth crime and justice is constructed, focusing specifically on debates over the culpability of young offenders.  I also examine debates over the degree and severity of youth crime and connect the divergent positions on this question to how young offenders are conceptualized.  Related to these debates, I examine the search for solutions to youth crime.  I argue that positions regarding how to address youth crime are rendered ambiguous given the creation of a hybridized youth justice context which combines various competing goals.  On a theoretical level, I explore the relationship between how formulations of  deviant identities (in this case  young offenders ) are related to other areas of advocacy over a social problem.  I explore the dynamics of a social problem debate which persists unresolved over a long period of time.  I also address the ways in which social context impacts upon claims made over a social problem. – CONFIGURATIONS OF SOCIAL CONTROL IN COMMUNITY RESPONSES TO SEX OFFENDERS Monica Williams, University of California, Davis Communities responding to sex offenders simultaneously enact formal and informal social controls. Yet, social control theories conceptualize formal and informal social control as separate realms that operate inversely. I extend these theories by proposing a theory of configurations of social control. In a configurations model of control, elements of the form and content of informal and formal social control combine to create new types not reducible to their formal and informal components. Drawing on legal consciousness, legal mobilization, risk, disaster, and community research, I provide a framework for understanding how the law links formal and informal social control such that we cannot experience either type of control without experiencing the other. Examining configurations of social control in the context of community responses to sexually violent predators (SVPs) provides a way to understand how social control operates on the ground. In my dissertation, I will combine media, archival, interview, and participant observation data from three responses to SVPs in California to analyze how communities invoke formal and informal social controls in their responses to sex offenders. I suggest that we must account for configurations of control when understanding the conflicted social control system that mandates sex offender releases, but also creates an inhospitable social context for reentry. More broadly, this research will provide a framework for understanding conflicts around other social problems that create a system at odds with itself. – THE FORMATION OF A GLOBAL INDIGENOUS WOMENS SOCIAL MOVEMENT AT THE UNITED NATIONS: CONTESTING THE COLONIAL LEGACY OF AN INTERLOCKING SYSTEM OF OPPRESSIONS Rosalee C. Gonzalez, Arizona State University Worldwide indigenous womens claims for social justice have transcended the domestic sphere to the global political arena cultivating a global indigenous womens social movement within the last sixteen years. The framing of their claims have shifted and traversed through a national/civil rights approach to an international human rights based approach, launching unprecedented articulations of the complexities and particularities of an interlocking racialized and engendered, individual and collective rights discourse. Evidently, indigenous women worldwide are working collectively to engender local and global spaces of indigenous resistancetargeting sites that challenge the colonial processes enacted nationally and internationally against the rights of indigenous peoples. This movement has increasingly expanded across continents and efficiently mobilized diverse social actors beyond indigenous women, such as non-state, state and international institutions who have and continue to incorporate indigenous womens issues in their global agendas. Consequently, it has flourished parallel to other transnational social movements (i.e., International Zapatismo, the World Social Forum, Gender as Human Rights Movement, etc.), yet it has been omitted and remains invisible within the dominant contemporary transnational and global social movement literature. This study examines and explicates the processes and interconnections that are enacted simultaneously--locally, globally, internally among indigenous peoples and externally among international institutionsand the structural opportunities and challenges that forged the emergence of this movement. The aim is to inscribe this international rights-based movements process, while constructing a textual safe space for the cultivation of a global decolonial feminist imaginary grounded in the oral narratives of key international indigenous women leaders. Accordingly, the site of inquiry for this study is the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII). THE CSI EFFECT: JURORS PERCEPTIONS AND TRIAL DECISIONS Rebecca M. Hayes-Smith, Central Michigan University The CSI Effect is the perceived influence of television crime show viewing on peoples perceptions of forensic evidence and criminal trial decisions. This is a new topic of interest with very little research examining whether crime shows do indeed influence people. Study one builds on the opinion research on perceptions about whether or not the CSI Effect exists. Results from study one indicate that people who watch crime shows perceive those shows to be more accurate and educational than non crime show viewers. Study two builds upon prior research by examining the influence between crime show viewing and level of forensic evidence available in a trial on peoples ratings of evidence and also trial decisions. Results for study two indicate a small but interesting influence between a trials level of forensic evidence and crime show viewing. People who are heavier crime show viewers do appear to expect more evidence in trial. – OLDER RELATIVES RAISING ADOLESCENTS: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN AGE OF CAREGIVER AND YOUTH DELINQUENT ACTS Lynn Frederick, University of South Carolina This dissertation examines the relationship between grandparents and other older relatives raising children and delinquency. It posits that youth raised by grandparents and other older caregivers are more likely to commit delinquent acts. This study uses survey responses from Wave I, The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (AddHealth), a comprehensive and representative data base. Bivariate, baseline logistic regression and multivariate regression models were used to test whether youth in the care of grandparents and other older persons were more likely to commit violent and non-violent delinquent acts than youth raised by their parents. Results of the bivariate analyses show a significantly higher likelihood of committing a violent delinquent act by youth raised by grandparents. This finding, however, does not hold up in the multivariate analysis. The mixed results generated in this study must be viewed in the context of the data limitations that confront researchers who study adolescents who are being cared for by grandparents and other older relatives. – PERCEPTIONS OF LEGITIMACY AND JUSTICE WITHIN FAMILIES IN JUVENILE DELINQUENCY COURT Liana Pennington, Northwestern University The juvenile court system depends upon parents and children perceiving that the court s power is legitimate and that the justice system will act fairly. Although parents are often required to attend all court hearings involving their delinquent child, research has not examined how these parents experience the juvenile court system and discuss concepts of law and justice with their children.   Perceptions of fairness in court systems differ sharply by race, with only fifteen percent of African-Americans with recent court experience believing that court outcomes are always or usually fair compared with nearly half of whites (Rottman and Hansen 2001).   As children from urban minority communities are disproportionately represented in the juvenile justice system (Feld 1999), it is critical to understand how these attitudes toward the court develop and under what circumstances parents perceptions of the court s legitimacy increase or decrease. The juvenile court aims to modify children s delinquent behavior, but parents attitudes toward the justice system could be undermining the court s efforts.   This qualitative study will follow twenty families in one urban juvenile court who have a child entering the juvenile justice system on a new charge of delinquency.   This in-depth research will examine the complex nature of legitimacy and justice, investigating how perceptions of the law are created and shaped through court experiences and family interaction. – BETWEEN RECONCILIATION AND JUSTICE: THE STRUGGLES FOR JUSTICE AND RECONCILIATION IN COLOMBIA Gabriel Ignacio Gomez, Arizona State University I propose a sociolegal research dissertation about the context of the recent transitional justice process in Colombia. The research attempts to understand how different social actors, frame the mechanisms of  reconciliation and  justice and how NGOs and victims associations use legal instruments to transform the conflict and reach what they consider  justice. I also want to bridge the more abstract level of social structural constraints and institutional arrangements with the more concrete level of every day practices in order to make visible the narratives of those actors who were marginalized from the peace process with paramilitary groups. In doing so, I want to advance theory on literature about law and society and transitional justice by means of applying and expanding the theoretical framework of reflexive sociology and legal research via the process of transitional justice in Colombia. Some of the main research questions are: How do actors such as the government, courts, human rights NGOs, and victims, struggle and negotiate the framing of mechanisms of  reconciliation and  justice ? And, to what extent do social practices of human rights and transitional justice NGOs and victims associations promote alternative forms of transitional justice? This research will be carried out in Colombia between July 2009 and June 2010 through a qualitative research design based on in-depth interviews. DOMESTICATING HUMAN RIGHTS: WOMEN OF COLOR BUILDING CONSCIOUSNESS THROUGH THE REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE MOVEMENT Zakiya Luna, University of Michigan The rejection of human rights by the US state may explain why marginalized women are using the concept to build a domestic social movement for reproductive justice (RJ) that challenges narrower reproductive rights analysis. SisterSong Women of Color Collective aims  to amplify and strengthen the collective voices of Indigenous women and women of color to ensure reproductive justice through securing human rights (SisterSong Matrix, emphasis added). The lack of human rights law in the US should result in fewer opportunities to mobilize human rights discourse, which would result in weakened belief in the utility of human rights. Yet SisterSong has grown from 16 to over 80 organizations, with a newsletter circulation of 18,000, establishing it as the anchor of the reproductive justice movement. First, I ask why are SisterSong and its member reproductive justice organizations integrating human rights when US social movements generally do not engage with this discourse and the state generally rejects it? The answer will come through revisiting the past through documents and interviews, but does not explain why this framing continues to resonate. Therefore, the second question is how does integrating human rights discourse impact members sense of self and other people as rights bearers? Answering the second question, via a member survey, interviews and participant observation, will explain how the organization s construction of collective identity facilitates members understanding of human rights and their identities. In addition to social movement theory on framing ( Snow et.al. s 1986) and collective identity (Taylor and Whittier 1992), this project engages with scholarship on human rights in the US (Anderson 2003, Merry 2006), legal consciousness (Ewick and Silbey 1998), and intersectionality (Crenshaw 1993) to explain SisterSong s anomalous choice and success. SisterSong s path shows that current literature whether sociology, law, or anthropology fails to address these new possibilities for raising consciousness and mobilizing around human rights. – AGENTS OF CHANGE: LAW ENFORCEMENT, PRISONS, AND POLITICS IN TEXAS AND CALIFORNIA Michael C. Campbell, University of California-Irvine This dissertation examines the policy changes that dramatically expanded the scale of incarceration in California and Texas in the latter third of the twentieth century, generating two of the world s largest prison systems and incarceration rates far higher than most democratic nations. By combining quantitative and qualitative research methods to form case studies of pivotal policy developments, and the sociological forces associated with them, this project contributes valuable empirical depth to the sociological literature, and offers theoretical insights into the factors that led to these changes. The findings indicate that the punitive shift in these states occurred during periods of intense socioeconomic change in which very few citizens voted. In this context, state-level networks of groups and individuals associated with law enforcement became increasingly influential in the political realm. Through direct lobbying in the state capitol and through their public statements regarding the nature of crime and the best means for responding to it, these networks successfully pushed for an increasingly punitive response to crime that relied on mass incarceration. They were most successful in periods of economic volatility, in which voters were increasingly responsive to certain politicians calls to  crack down on the  criminal element of the states. These leaders called for a  war to punish wrongdoers, and were willing to fund that war through any means possible; voters in both states responded by approving billions of dollars in borrowing to execute an extremely costly prison expansion program. – HERO OR INMATE, PRISON OR CAMP, REHABILITATION OR LABOR EXTRACTION: A MULTI-LEVEL STUDY OF CALIFORNIA S PRISON FIRE CAMPS Philip Goodman, University of California-Irvine In the past several years there has been a concerted effort by scholars to understand the changing nature of punishment and the carceral system in the United States, especially in light of what is sometimes referred to as the  punitive turn and, related, the phenomenon of exploding incarceration rates in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Largely missing from these mostly theoretical accounts, however, are grounded empirical studies capable of shedding light on how broad shifts in punishment translate into practices on the ground inside carceral facilities. In this dissertation I use California s prison fire camps carceral environments in which minimum- and medium-security prisoners are housed in open settings without a fence or other secure boundary, and trained and deployed as wildland firefighters to plumb the depth and breadth of apparent macro-level trends in punishment. Specifically, I examine the fire camps with a multi-methods approach consisting of interpretive historical analysis of the history of penal labor camps in California, interviews and ethnographic field observations to explore labor, race, and rehabilitation in the camps today, and quantitative model building to determine whether talk about rehabilitation translates into certain outcomes while on parole. My conclusions include a variegated nature of punishment that provides opportunities for programs to survive in seemingly hostile penological and social contexts, and the camps as liminal spaces simultaneously borrowing from walled prisons yet also predicated on perceptions about release and freedom. The broader implications of this work include envisioning prisons and other forms of incarceration as a broad and diverse spectrum of lived experiences and recognizing that concepts such as  rehabilitation or  exploitation,  inmate or  hero, and  prison or  camp, can coexist in complex and fascinating ways that vary by individual and social setting. – TAKING AIM: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF TARGET GROUPS AND THE FORMATION OF CONTEMPORARY COUNTERTERRORISM POLICY IN FRANCE AND THE UNITED STATES Nikole Hotchkiss, Indiana University-Bloomington The war against terrorism has come to define, even dominate, the current era. How should we understand the origins of policy ideas about fighting terrorism? Although terrorism is increasingly a topic of sociological inquiry the study of counterterrorism has been neglected.  Not only have recent events, such as the 2005 London bombings, the 2004 Madrid subway bombings and the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S., brought renewed attention to terrorism, but current debates about the treatment of suspected terrorists, and specifically interrogation procedures, have highlighted the importance of state how states respond to terrorist threat. Due to the importance of such issues, conflict between political actors in occurs, as groups often disagree on the best way to solve the problem of terrorism.  This dissertation examines policy approaches to counterterrorism from 1980 through 2001 in France and the United States in order to answer three broad questions: 1) how do states decide the policy response following a terrorist attack? 2) Do these responses vary over time? And if so, why? and 3 )Are there cross-national differences in state responses to similar types of terrorist threat?  What might explain these differences? This work displays the need to consider national context, timing, path dependency and recent events when analyzing how policy change occurs following domestic and international crises.  The findings support a three-dimensional approach to studying policy change: through discourse, legal change, and policy implementation.  These dimensions are driven primarily by policy elites who conceptualize threat according to two main approaches: cultural categories of threat and functionalism.  The degree of path dependency varied based on the dimensions of policy.  Discourse was the most likely to change over time, according to the political and social climate. Legal change and policy implementation were more likely to shift gradually.  As with many historical studies, the ability to understand past policy outcomes may give scholars a better chance to predict future policy outcomes given future crises. _______________________________ NOTEWORTHY PUBLICATIONS GUNS, VIOLENCE, AND CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR: THE OFFENDER S PERSPECTIVE by Mark Pogrebin, Paul Stretesky, and N. Prabha Unnithan. 2009. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. (ISBN 978-1-58826-665-1). How are guns used and viewed by criminals? Where do criminals obtain guns? And how do laws make firearms more or less accessible? Confronting these contentious questions, Guns, Violence, and Criminal Behavior offers a comprehensive exploration of the social processes surrounding illegal firearm use and criminal behavior.  The authors draw on in-depth interviews with felons convicted of gun-related crimes and previous quantitative studies to offer a fresh look at the key issues of gun violence. Highlighting the overlooked symbolic power of guns in criminal situations, their findings underscore the influence of social and cultural forces in affecting gun use. Mark Pogrebin is professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Colorado-Denver and a member of the Law and Society Division of SSSP. His most recent book is About Criminals: A View of the Offender's World, Sage Publications. SOCIOLOGY OF LAW: VISIONS OF A SCHOLARLY TRADITION by Mathieu Deflem. 2008. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. (ISBN 978-0-521-85725-3) Since the classic contributions of Weber and Durkheim, the sociology of law has raised key questions on the place of law in society. Drawing together both theoretical and empirical themes, Mathieu Deflem reviews the field's major accomplishments and reveals the value of the multiple ways in which sociologists study the social structures and processes of law. He discusses both historical and contemporary issues, from early theoretical foundations and the work of Weber and Durkheim, through the contribution of sociological jurisprudence, to the development of modern perspectives to clarify how sociologists study law. Chapters also look at the role of law in relation to the economy, politics, culture, and the legal profession; and aspects of law enforcement and the globalization of law. This book will appeal to scholars and students of the sociology of law, jurisprudence, social and political theory, and social and political philosophy. Mathieu Deflem is Associate Professor of Sociology at University of South Carolina and a member of SSSP s Law and Society Division. He is also the author of The Policing of Terrorism: Organizational and Global Perspectives, forthcoming from Routledge, 2010. STALKING VIOLENCE: NEW PATTERNS OF TRAUMA AND OBSESSION by Stephen J. Morewitz. 2009. New York: Springer. (ISBN 9780306473654) One of Morewitz's central assumptions is that stalking is a patterned set of behaviors that arises out of attempts to exert power over another person in a variety of relationships. He assesses the extent to which gender, age, and other characteristics of victims and offenders affect the patterns of stalking behaviors, in order to shed light on the degree to which the roles and norms related to demographic and social characteristics that influence the dynamics of stalking and its diverse and often ambiguous nature. Stephen J. Morewitz is founder of Stephen J. Morewitz, Ph.D., & Associates, a firm that provides expert witnesses and consultations in the fields of personal injury, medical malpractice, sexual harassment, behavioral sciences, medical education, management, and grant writing. He is also a member of the Law and Society Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. ___________________________________ CHAMBLISS PRESENTED WITH LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD How does one describe the life and accomplishments of Bill Chambliss? Bill is a pioneer in so many ways. In a phone conversation last year, Bill referred to his efforts in establishing the sociology of law as an academic study. Bill has covered the field with important research on delinquency, the war on drugs, and the power of the legal system. We could start our examination of his career with the groundbreaking research on vagrancy laws, official corruption and drug smuggling, labeling and street gang activity, state power and control, and white collar crime. It seems surreal that Bill s research on vagrancy laws was published back in 1964. Alternately, we can talk about Bill s stints as President of the SSSP, ASC, and other organizations. Bill s ASC presidential address on state crime remains a classic (although his reference to my work was certainly an added feature). We can also elaborate forever on the awards Bill has won over the years from such organizations as the ASC, ACJS, National Council on Crime and Delinquency, and most recently the ASA sociology of law section. We can also talk about Bill s contributions to international criminology through studies of Asian drug smuggling. Of course, we can talk about Bill and the wonderful parties at those 1980s criminology meetings where the alcohol flowed freely and the interaction between the guests was quite spirited. Those social occasions still resonate in our memories of past criminology conferences. Most of all, we take pride in citing Bill s work on an early and often basis in our discussions of delinquency, state crime, and the impact of laws and the legal system. Bill s work served to demystify the process of law and provide a framework for understanding power and society. Many scholars owe a debt to Bill for his development of the critical perspectives underlying the sociology of law. In summation, Bill s research and teaching has served as an inspiration to many students and scholars. In this spirit, it is my privilege to present William J. Chambliss with the SSSP Law and Society Division Lifetime Achievement Award. Henceforth, this award will be known as the  William J. Chambliss Lifetime Achievement Award. Congratulations for your efforts in the paving the way for generations of scholars. Among Bill Chambliss's many influential publications: 2001. Power, Politics, and Crime. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. 1996.  Another Lost War: The Costs and Consequences of Drug Prohibition. Social Justice, 22, 101-124. 1994. "Policing the Ghetto Underclass: The Politics of Law and Law Enforcement." Social Problems, May, 177-194. 1989. "State Organized Crime." Criminology, 27, 183-208. 1980.  On Lawmaking. British Journal of Law and Society, Winter, 149-172. 1978. On the Take. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. 1973. "The Saints and the Roughnecks." Society Nov/Dec, 24-31. 1972. Boxman: A Professional Thief's Journey (with Harry King). NY: Harper & Row. 1964. "A Sociological Analysis of the Law of Vagrancy." Social Problems, summer, 67-77. See a full list of Chambliss's publications at: http://www.gwu.edu/~soc/faculty/chambliss.cfm _____________________________________ SAVE THE DATE 2011 ANNUAL MEETING AUGUST 12  14, 2011 BLACKSTONE RENAISSANCE HOTEL CHICAGO, ILLINOIS _____________________________________ Law & Society Sponsored Sessions: 1) SOCIAL JUSTICE AND HARM Organizer: William Chambliss (wchamb@gwu.edu) 2) GENDER, RACE, CLASS, AND LAW Organizer: Mary Nell Trautner  (trautner@buffalo.edu) Description:  This panel will feature a range of papers that examine the relationship between law and gender, race, and/or class. Papers may be empirical or theoretical, micro or macro. 3) CHANGING LAWS & CHANGING MINDS  (thematic session) Invited Panel Organizers: Claire Renzetti (Claire.Renzetti@notes.udayton.edu) and Paul Steele (pd.steele@moreheadstate.edu) Description:  This invited session will focus on activist efforts to change laws in an effort to bring about social changes in both attitudes and behaviors with regard to social problems, including the successes and limitations of this approach to social change. Co-Sponsored Sessions: 1) LAW AND EDUCATION (Education Division) Organizer: Emily Horowitz  (ehorowitz@stfranciscollege.edu) Description:  This panel will focus on a range of topics related to recent debates and issues in the field of education and the law. Specifically, this panel will address topics such as (but not limited to): charter schools and their relationship to public schools; vouchers for private education; the impact of the "No Child Left Behind Law"; mayoral control of the schools and community control; higher education and affirmative action; and the rights of English-Language-Learners and immigrant students. 2) LAW AND THE WORKPLACE (Labor Studies) Organizer: Mary Nell Trautner (trautner@buffalo.edu) Description:  This panel will focus on the interrelationship between law and the workplace.  Papers can address a range of topics including employment discrimination, sexual harassment, dispute resolution techniques, regulation, and more. 3) LEGAL ISSUES & THE ENVIRONMENT (Environment and Technology) Organizer: Steven Lang (stelang@rcs.com) Description:  This session will explore connection between the law or criminal justice system and environmental concerns. Papers can cover a variety of issues including but not limited to: prosecution of environmental crime; environmental legislation; theoretical issues between the law and the environment; green criminology; or the enforcement of environmental laws. 4) MARGINALIZED JUSTICE (Institutional Ethnography) Organizer: Jeralyn Faris (jlfaris@purdue.edu) Description:  People who are marginalized in our criminal justice system can be served by activist-oriented scholars who are focused on issues of law and society.  Institutional ethnography is a theorized process of discovery that has great potential for exploring how the everyday lives of people involved in the criminal justice system are organized. This method of inquiry is useful in engaging in critical analysis of the relations that rule people's lives.  Scholars in both Institutional Ethnography and Law and Society divisions of SSSP are encouraged to submit papers. 5) LAW AND SEXUALITY (Crime and Juvenile Delinquency, Sexual Behavior, Politics and Communities) Organizer: Lloyd Klein (lklein@stfranciscollege.edu) Description:  This session will explore convergences between the legal system and sexual issues within societal settings. Papers can cover a variety of concerns including but not limited to: same-sex marriage, sex offender legislation, HIV/AIDS policies, sodomy laws, and GLBT rights. 6) CRIME, DRUGS, AND SOCIAL POLICY (Crime and Juvenile Delinquency) Organizer: Stacy Burns (sburns@lmu.edu) Description:  The impact of drug criminalization and law enforcement on individuals, families and communities; race, class and gender dimensions drug criminalization and its history; policing drug use/abuse and drug-related crimes. 6) Crime, Drugs, and Social Policy  (Crime and Juvenile Delinquency)     Organizer: Stacy Burns (sburns@lmu.edu)     Description:  The impact of drug criminalization and law enforcement on individuals, families and communities; race, class and gender dimensions drug criminalization and its history; policing drug use/abuse and drug-related crimes. 7) Families and Social Justice  (Family)     Organizer: Ebonie Cunningham-Stringer (Ebonie.Cunningham@Wilkes.edu) —