Institute for Legal Studies

The Institute for Legal Studies (ILS) was established at the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1985 under the leadership of David Trubek, who was succeeded first by Marc Galanter and then by Howard Erlanger. In establishing the ILS, the Law School sought to expand and institutionalize its long-standing “law in action” approach, which dates back to the early part of the twentieth century and remains vital to its mission. The ILS was created to foster the interdisciplinary study and teaching of law, not only by providing support for its own faculty, but also by explicitly connecting to other departments on campus and by cultivating a network of scholars with similar interests worldwide.

The Institute acts as a catalyst and facilitator for scholarly work on sociolegal topics carried out by faculty and graduate students, and it supports related studies in dual degree graduate programs and in the undergraduate Legal Studies Program. Over the years, it has promoted and assisted independent and collaborative research in a wide variety of substantive areas in sociolegal studies, including seminal work on the social context of contractual relationships, litigation and disputing, comparative institutional analysis, poverty law and administrative agencies, family law, feminist legal theory, legal history of the family, implementation of law in organizations, critical race theory, the legal profession, and emerging issues in international law and globalization.

Major programs based at the Institute include the Wisconsin Legal History Program, the Wisconsin Law and Humanities Program, the Wisconsin Contracts Project, the Wisconsin Project on Governance and Regulation, and the University's Global Legal Studies Center. The Institute collaborates with the American Bar Foundation through the New Legal Realism Project and by housing the Review Section of Law & Social Inquiry. Five scholars currently or formerly affiliated with the Institute have been elected president of the Law and Society Association, and the Institute housed the Law & Society Review from 2004 to 2007.

The Institute counts among its affiliates many law, social science, and humanities faculty at the University of Wisconsin, as well as selected ILS distinguished scholars at other universities. It is home to a changing group of scholars with shortand long-term affiliations, including graduate students, a funded legal history fellow, and visiting scholars from outside the United States. Each year the Institute hosts more than forty presentations on a wide variety of topics, as well as a half-dozen symposia and conferences on such topics as international law and globalization, the liberal state and its mental health power, new legal realism, law and theology, emerging issues in legal history, and feminist legal theory. On a biennial basis, the Institute hosts two signature events: the Hurst Summer Institute in Legal History and the Midwest Law and Society Retreat.