SECTION REPORT OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF LAW SECTION, 1999-2000
Submitted by Robin Stryker, Chair, 1999-2000

Section Activities, 1999-2000

The Sociology of Law Section is a relatively small section, but (in the 
opinion of the writer of this report) it is  remarkable for the level of 
excellence of its members' scholarship.  The section also is remarkable 
for the commitment its members and officers show to participating in the 
life of the section.  It is no accident that each year section members 
reach into their own pockets and donate money to built up the reserves of 
the section, so that in the future it might undertake additional useful 
intellectual and professional socialization activities.  Nor is it an 
accident that the section, though small, always has more than the minimum 
quorum of 25 persons at its annual business meetings.  Nor, finally, is it 
an accident that section members volunteer enthusiastically for committees 
that do a substantial amount of work each year. 

Major activities for the year included preparing the intellectual and 
social content for the August, 2000 meetings, and also included activities 
of the Nominations Committee, two Prize Committees, and the Publications 
and Membership Committees.  More information on nominations and on prizes 
and prize committees is included below, under Nominations and Elections, 
and under Business Meeting, 2000.

The Sociology of Law Section put together an excellent intellectual 
program for this year's meetings.  This program included a session titled 
Sociology of Law Meets Public Policy (organized by Abigail Seguy and Mia 
Cahill), and a Mini-Conference jointly sponsored with Comparative and 
Historical Sociology.  Elizabeth Boyle (for Sociology of Law) and Bruce 
Carruthers (for Comparative and Historical Sociology) together organized 
the Mini-Conference.  It consisted of back-to-back sessions titled Law and 
Domination in Comparative and Historical Perspective, and Transnational 
Perspectives on Law.  In addition, Nancy Reichman organized Roundtables on 
Legal Frames, Law and Social Change, Women, Identity and Law, and 
Socio-Legal Perspectives on Crime and Justice.  

All of our section's sessions were open submission and recruited a series 
of wonderful papers.  These included a nice mix of papers by more senior 
scholars with the papers of junior scholars and graduate students.  Even 
though Sociology of Law day was the final day of the conference, section 
sessions were well attended. Discussion at the sessions was extremely 
lively and provocative.  The sessions also introduced the section to a 
number of participants and attendees who were not yet section members but 
whose research focuses at least in part on law.  They were urged to become 
members of the section.

As for Sociology of Law Section social activity, we co-hosted a reception 
with the sections on Crime, Law and Deviance, Sexualities, and Comparative 
and Historical Sociology.  The reception was very well attended, and 
everyone seemed to be having a good time.  ASA Meeting Services kindly 
ensured that we had a very large room for the reception, so that we could 
accommodate all our many attendees.  This helped enormously in making the 
reception a success.

The Sociology of Law Section alternates between offering a Best Article 
Award and a Best Book Award.  This was a book year.  For more on awards, 
see below.

A major task for the section this year was to find a Newsletter Editor to 
replace Bob Kidder, who had been responsible for the Newsletter since the 
section's inception.  Finding a new editor proved to be no easy task.   In 
the end, the section was very fortunate to recruit Marvin Prosono as our 
new Newsletter Editor. Marty put out his first newsletter in spring, 2000.  
Meanwhile, our incredibly hard working Publications Chair and Webmaster, 
Matt Silberman, oversaw our Section Listserv, Web Pages and an 
e-discussion group.

Lauren Edelman this year continued to oversee the section's Assistant 
Professor Mentoring Program.  This is a program begun by Lauren when she 
was section Chair.  It matches junior scholars with senior mentors, and 
has been especially helpful for assistant professors that have no senior 
colleagues on site who are sociologists of law. 

At this year's ASA, the Sociology of Law Section Council met for two hours 
(starting at 7:30 a.m.) to discuss a wide variety of issues.  These 
included committee reports, discussion of diverse newsletter and 
publication committee issues, membership enhancement, and budget and 
meeting planning for 2001.  Among decisions or suggestions made by Council 
were the recommendation that excerpts or synopses from ASA presentations 
and/or books, articles and papers awarded section prizes be included in 
the newsletter.  This would help members who were unable to be at the 
meetings appreciate what they have missed, and it would help us advertise 
our section's intellectual issues and interests to potential new members.  

Council also discussed several plans for membership enhancement, with the 
goal of recruiting 100 new section members.  Graduate advisors will be 
asked to encourage their graduate students to enroll and perhaps pay the 
$5.00 dues for those already members of ASA but not section members.  The 
tear-off sign-up sheet in the Newsletter helped us recruit members this 
spring, and it will be continued.   A special targeted solicitation is to 
be directed by Mary Vogel, Chair of the Membership Committee.  It is to go 
out to ASA members who are listed in various directories as having 
law-related research or teaching interests and projects, but who are not 
yet section members.  It will also go to all those who presented papers at 
ASA this year on law-related topics.  We have noticed that an  increasing 
number of scholars in other sections including work, occupations and 
organizations, sex and gender, science and technology, political 
sociology, and comparative and historical sociology are doing law-related 
work.  These scholars are an especially fertile ground for the section's 
recruitment efforts.  In addition, Wendy Espeland's proposal that the 
section use the saying "It's the Law" to advertise ourselves was to be 
presented to the membership at the Business Meeting (see below.) 

Present at the Council meeting were Robin Stryker, Chair, Susan Silbey, 
outgoing Chair, Nancy Reichman, Chair-Elect, John Hagan, incoming 
Chair-Elect, Kitty Calavita, Secretary-Treasurer, Matt Silberman, 
Publications Committee Chair, Kim Lane Scheppele, Chair, Book Prize 
Committee, Mia Cahill, Council Member, Mark Suchman, Council Member, Lisa 
Sanchez, Council Member, Wendy Espeland, Chair, Nominations Committee, and 
Marvin Prosono, Newsletter Editor.

Nominations and Elections:

This year's Nominations Committee consisted of Chair Wendy Espeland, 
Northwestern University, Lauren Edelman, University of 
California-Berkeley, Calvin Morrill, University of Arizona, Jerry Van Hoy, 
Purdue University, and Carol Seron, Baruch College.  Paying attention to 
issues of diversity, and to the section's interest in recruiting excellent 
scholars in their early careers to run for positions on Council, the 
Committee's collective deliberations resulted in a superb slate of 
candidates.  As Wendy Espeland succinctly put it: "It was an embarrassment 
of riches. We had some very close races this year."  Close races included 
one Council position decided by the Chair's coin toss (in the presence of 
two witnesses), to decide between two persons who received the same number 
of votes.  The resulting slate of new officers is as follows: John Hagan, 
Chair-Elect, Northwestern University, Elizabeth Chambliss, 
Secretary-Treasurer, Harvard Law School, Mia Cahill, Council Member, New 
York University, Mark Cooney, Council Member, University of Georgia, and 
Lisa Sanchez, Council Member, University of Illinois at Chicago.

Business Meeting, Washington DC., 2000 (including Awards):

Section Chair Robin Stryker convened the Sociology of Law Section Business 
Meeting on Wednesday, August 19 at 9:30 a.m.  Including Stryker, there 
were 31 section members present.  

Section Awards were the first item of business on the agenda.  Kim 
Scheppele, Chair of the Book Prize Committee, described the process the 
Committee used to seek nominations and select winners. The committee was 
aggressive in seeking out nominations, restricting their review to books 
that were primarily in sociology and primarily about law.  They considered 
28 books published in 1998 and 1999.  Two books were selected for special 
recognition: Pamela Brandwein's Reconstructing Reconstruction: The Supreme 
Court and the Production of Historical Truth (Duke University Press 1999), 
and Patricia Ewick and Susan Silbey's The Common Place of Law: Stories 
from Everyday Life (University of Chicago Press, 1998).  The award for 
best book in the sociology of law went to Robert L Nelson and William P. 
Bridges for Legalizing Gender Inequality: Courts, Markets and Unequal Pay 
for Women in America (Cambridge University Press, 1999).  All of the book 
authors were present to receive their awards.  Kim Scheppele not only 
prepared awards.  She also prepared and delivered lengthy letters from the 
Committee.  These letters contained detailed discussion and praise of the 
strengths of each book.  The Committee's synopses and praise for each book 
will be included in the section's Newsletter, as an advertisement for the 
extremely high quality and diversity of contemporary scholarship in the 
sociology of law, as well as for the centrality of that scholarship to 
sociology as a whole.  The section will recommend that the journal 
Contemporary Sociology review all three books.

Matthieu Deflem, Chair of the Student Paper Prize Committee, announced 
that the undergraduate student prize went to Jonathan Charles Dunten (UC 
Santa Barbara) for his paper "Avoiding Star Wars: Struggles between 
National Sovereignty and International Cooperation in Outer Space Law." 
The graduate student paper prize went to Myrna Dawson and Ronit Dinovitzer 
(University of Toronto), for their paper, "The Decision to Prosecute in 
Cases of Domestic Violence: Assessing the Role of Victim Cooperation."  
Students may self-nominate for this award, or their faculty advisors may 
nominate them. 

Second on the agenda were two policy matters pertaining to awards.  There 
was lengthy discussion about whether the "Special Recognition" category 
should be a matter of discretion for the Book and Article Prize Award 
Committees, or should be established as a matter of policy.  It was agreed 
to establish this category, with the proviso that it only be awarded if 
the situation truly called for it.  Section members voted to use the label 
"special recognition," rather than "honorable mention."

With respect to the student awards, members voted to establish a policy of 
awarding $300.00 to the graduate student prizewinner to help defray costs 
for the student to come to the meeting and receive her prize.  Members 
voted to award an amount of $500.00 to the undergraduate student 
prizewinner.  This is to be awarded whether or not the undergraduate 
winner attends the meeting.

Third on the agenda, Secretary-Treasurer Kitty Calavita presented the 
proposed budget that had earlier in the day been approved by Council.  
Kitty announced that our assets have grown to $3,765.45.  This was in part 
because many section members make annual donations to the sections 
discretionary funds, and because various allocations in last year's budget 
were not expended, such as some Newsletter expenses and $300.00 that had 
been allocated for a membership drive.  Kitty proposed a budget including: 
$1000 for the ASA reception, $1100 for the Newsletter, $250.00 for a 
membership drive, $300.00 for an assistant for the Newsletter, $300.00 for 
the graduate student paper prize, and $50.00 for the undergraduate prize.  
The budget was unanimously approved.

THE FORMAL BUDGET for 2001, prepared by Secretary-Treasurer Kitty 
Calavita, is appended to this report.

Fourth on the agenda, Chair Robin Stryker announced that, according to the 
latest figures from our recent section membership efforts, we now have 300 
members in our section.  Because the section has always been close to the 
300 minimum membership threshold--sometimes a bit above, but sometimes 
falling slightly below--Stryker voiced concern about membership.  Since 
the Sociology of Law section has performed extremely well on the 
intellectual front, members suggested that we might visibly up the "fun" 
quotient, preferably in a way that advertised section membership.  Wendy 
Espeland suggested that the section have large buttons inscribed with 
"It's the Law" for members to wear.  This suggestion met with unanimous 
enthusiastic approval by section members. 

Fifth and last on the agenda, incoming President-Elect John Hagan 
discussed ideas for next year's sessions.  These might include a session 
oriented around local issues entitled "L.A. Law," and one focused on 
public policymaking.  Hagan solicited input from members, requesting that 
anyone with general ideas or specific proposals contact him immediately 
given how soon session information is due at ASA.

Robin Stryker adjourned the meeting at 10:25, after handing over 
governance of the section to Nancy Reichman's capable hands.