Cross-Disciplinary Lectures
The Cross-Disciplinary Legal Studies Program at the University of Alabama School of Law sponsors and supports a variety of research and educational opportunities for faculty and students. The Program is committed to fostering cutting-edge research, analysis, and teaching that focus on the interaction and integration of diverse academic disciplines as they relate to law, legal theory, and public policy. These disciplines include, but are not limited to, philosophy, economics, political science, psychology, sociology, anthropology, feminist theory, history, neuroscience, medicine, and statistics.
The Program sponsors lectures, symposia, and a cross-disciplinary workshop series. The Program also provides support to the law school’s joint-degree programs and to courses and student organizations with an interdisciplinary focus. For a full description of participants, themes and papers, please click on the links below.
Board of Directors
Affiliated Faculty
Meador Lectures
The University of Alabama School of Law established the Meador Lectures in 1995 to honor our graduate and former Dean, Daniel J. Meador, who delivered the inaugural lecture. Beginning in 2004-05, the lecture series has focused on a single interdisciplinary theme with a premier group of scholars discussing that theme from their distinct scholarly perspectives. The Meador Lectures are sponsored by the law school’s Program on Cross-Disciplinary Legal Studies.
Identity
Richard Delgado (The University of Alabama School of Law), Noconformity in American Law Diversity (9/16/2016) Janet Halley (Harvard Law School), (9/16/2016) Saul Levmore (The University of Chicago Law School), Title VII to Tinder: Law’s Antidiscrimination Asymmetry and Occasional Market Superiority (9/16/2016) Elyn Saks (USC Gould School of Law), Psychosis and Identity (9/16/2016)
Equality
Matthew Adler (Duke University School of Law), Equity by the Numbers: Measuring Poverty, Inequality, and Injustice (4/11/2014) Martha Fineman (Emory University School of Law), Equality and Difference- The Restrained State (4/11/2014) Jerry Kang (UCLA School of Law), Rethinking Intent and Impact: Some Behavioral Realism about Equal Protection (4/11/2014) Reva Siegel (Yale Law School), Race-Conscious But Race-Neutral: The Constitutionality of Disparate Impact in the Roberts Court (4/11/2014)
Objectivity
Frederick Schauer (University of Virginia School of Law ), Objectivity and Equality (Topic) (1/23/2013) Lawrence Alexander (University of San Diego School of Law), The Objectivity of Morality, Rules, and Law: A Conceptual Map(3/9/2013) Katharine Bartlett (Duke University School of Law), Objectivity: A Feminist Revisit (11/12/2013)
Morality
Lawrence Solum (Georgetown University Law Center), Virtue as the End of Law (Topic) (2/9/2012) Jules Coleman (University of Miami School of Law), Markets, Methods, Morals, and the Law (4/17/2012) Jonathan Haidt (), Moral Phsychology and the Law: How Intuitions Drive Reasoning, Judgement, and the Search for Evidence (9/10/2012) Anita Allen-Castelitto (University of Pennsylvania Law School), An Ethical Duty to Protect One’s Own Information Privacy? (10/18/2012)
Boundaries
Lauren Benton (Vanderbilt University Law School), This Melancholy Labyrinth: The Trial of Arthur Hodge and the Boundaries of Imperial Law (2/20/2011) Brian Leiter (University of Chicago Law School ), The Boundaries of the Moral (and Legal) Community (9/30/2011) Richard Thompson Ford (Stanford Law School), Law and Borders (3/7/2012) Robert Ellickson (Yale Law School), The Law and Economics of Street Layouts: How a Grid Pattern Benefits a Downtown (3/2/2012)
Rationality
Rosabeth Kanter (Harvard Business School), Values, Purpose, Meaning, and Expectations: Why Culture and Context Matter (1/21/2010) Hanoch Dagan (Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University), Between Rationality and Benevolence: The Happy Ambivalence of Law and Legal Theory (4/6/2010) Phoebe Ellsworth (University of Michigan Law School ), Legal Reasoning and Scientific Reasoning (11/1/2010) Ronald Allen (Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law), Rationality and the Taming of Complexity (1/27/2011)
Freedom
Matthew Kramer (Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge), Freedom and the Rule of Law (3/26/2009) Mechele Dickerson (University of Texas School of Law), Vanishing Financial Freedom (3/31/2009) Ian Ayres (Yale Law School), Using Commitment Contracts to Further Ex Ante Freedoms: The Twin Problems of Substitution and Ego Depletion (4/19/2009) Ian Haney Lopez (University of California, Berkeley, School of Law ), Freedom, Mass Incarceration, and Racism in the Age of Obama (4/1/2010)
Empire
Daniel Hulsebosch (New York University School of Law), An Empire of Law: Chancellor Kent and the Revolution in Books in the Early Republic (9/10/2007) Michele Goodwin (UC Irvine School of Law), Empires of the Flesh: Tissue and Organ Taboos (10/5/2007) Herbert Hovenkamp (University of Pennsylvania Law School), Innovation and the Domain of Competition Policy (2/4/2008) Jose Alvarez (The New York University School of Law), Contemporary Foreign Investment Law: An “Empire of Law” of the “Law of Empire”? (4/15/2008)
Wealth
Richard Epstein (New York University School of Law), How to Create-or Destroy-Wealth in Real Property (8/30/2006) Stephen Choi (New York University School of Law), The Problems with Analysts (10/23/2006) Robert Cooter (The University of California, Berkeley, School of Law ), Doing What You Say: Contracts and Economic Development (2/28/2007) Mary Ellen O’Connell (The Notre Dame Law School), Beyond Wealth: Stories of Art, War, and Greed (4/4/2007)
Fiduciaries
Jill Fisch (University of California, Berkeley, School of Law ), Fiduciary Duties and the Analyst Scandals (10/20/2005) John Langbein (Yale Law School), Why Did Trust Law Become Statute Law in the United States? (4/6/2006) Deborah DeMott (Duke University School of Law), Disloyal Agents (11/9/2006)
Risk
Lisa Heinzerling (The Georgetown University Law Center), Risking it All (10/12/2004) Cass Sunstein (Harvard Law School), Precautions Against What? The Availability Heuristic and Cross-Cultural Risk Perception (3/8/2005) Jonathan Simon (The University of California, Berkeley, School of Law ), Risk and Reflexivity: What Socio-Legal Studies Adds to the Risk and the Law (10/17/2005)
Previous Lectures
Lori Damrosch (Columbia Law School), Enforcing International Law in the United States Courts (Topic) (2/19/2004) Anita Allen (University of Pennsylvania Law School), Privacy Isn’t Everything: Accountability as a Personal and Social Good (2/4/2003) Peter Strauss (Columbia Law School), Courts or Tribunals? Federal Courts and the Common Law (11/2/2001) Akhil Reed Amar (Yale Law School), Hugo Black and the Hall of Fame (10/23/2000) Saul Levmore (University of Chicago Law School ), Speculating Law: Beyond Cigarettes and Swiss Banks (2/7/2000) Lea Brilmayer (Yale Law School), America: The World’s Mediator? (2/22/1999) Paul Carrington (Duke University School of Law), Restoring Vitality to State and Local Politics by correcting the Excessive Independence of the Supreme Court (2/9/1998)
Other Lectures
The Cross-Disciplinary Legal Studies Program plays an important role in facilitating and fostering scholarship and interactions among scholars from different disciplines. As part of this mission the Program holds symposia and offers courses and programs to faculty, policy makers and students.
Law, Economics, and Society
Established in 2020, this seminar exposes students to cutting edge legal scholarship that employs a wide array of methodologies. Every week a new speaker is invited to present a work in progress related to law, economics, and society. Students write reflection papers that are shared with the speaker. Each session is comprised of two parts. The first is open to the entire law school community and allows students and faculty to engage critically with the speaker. The second is devoted to discussing the development of the research paper, from idea to an article, with special attention to challenges, forking paths, and lessons. Participation in this part is limited and priority is given to students enrolled to the seminar. The seminar is ideal for students who seek to learn how to engage critically with experts and scholarship and develop their own ideas into concrete research scholarship.
The 18th Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Law and Economics Association (MLEA)
On September 2019 , the Cross-Disciplinary Legal Studies Program hosted the 18th Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Law and Economics Association. The conference was organized by Professors Shahar Dillbary and Yonathan Arbel and involved a diverse group of scholars applying different methodologies. The list of the participants and their respective papers is available below.
Decision Theory and Law Symposium
The symposium took place on April 13, 2012 with speakers from the fields of philosophy, psychology, economics, and law. A full list of the speakers, their respective institutional affiliations and the articles presented is available below and on the Conference Program.
Professor Keith Hylton (Boston University School of Law), Negligence, Causation, and Incentives for Care(4/13/2012) Professor Alex Stein (Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law) at the time of the Symposium and a member of the Israeli Supreme Court since 2018), Are People Probabilistically Challenged? (4/13/2012) Dean José Luis Bermúdez (College of Liberal Arts, Texas A&M University), Introducing Super-Risk (4/13/2012) Professor Paul Pecorino (Culverhouse College of Commerce, The University of Alabama), (4/13/2012) Professor Jeff Rachlinski (Cornell University Law School) Selling Heuristics (4/13/2012)