Law and Society Association, the

Before the Second World War, there was only sporadic interest in the United States in sociolegal studies, that is, studies of law from the standpoint of one or more of the social sciences. In the 1920s and 1930s, a few legal scholars pioneered in empirical studies of the legal system. In the 1930s, too, the Johns Hopkins Institute of Law, in Baltimore, Maryland, was founded as a research institute whose mission was rigorous empirical study of the law in action. Several interesting studies came out of the institute, for example, a massive study of the divorce laws of Maryland. The Institute's life, however, was brief. It did not survive the depression. The legal realist movement in law schools paid lip service to empirical research on law but actually did very little of it.

The period just after the Second World War brought about significant change. It was a period of great optimism in the social sciences. Many scholars hoped that the social sciences would generate breakthroughs on human behavior as exciting as the breakthroughs in biology and physics. The study of sociology flourished, and so did its subfields, including the nascent field of sociology of law. The Ford Foundation funded sociolegal research at the University of Chicago Law School, in particular a major study of the jury system.

The dramatic decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court under Earl Warren (1891–1974) were another catalyst for sociolegal research. Sociologists had traditionally ignored or slighted legal phenomena. But the Warren court decisions, especially on school desegregation, convinced some social scientists that neglect of the subject had been a mistake; law was not an inert and marginal phenomenon but rather a vital force in society and an important agent of change. At any rate, law and the legal system needed and deserved careful attention and study by social scientists.