UMass Amherst to Host Northeast Law and Society Retreat on Sept. 27

The Center for Justice, Law, and Societies at UMass Amherst will host the Northeast Law and Society Retreat on Friday, Sept. 27 at the Campus Center. Sponsored by the Law & Society Association (LSA), the event will bring together faculty members, graduate students and others who are interested in law and policy, both domestically and internationally.<_o3a_p>

UMass students, faculty, and staff and graduate students from other institutions are invited to attend the retreat at no cost. Admission for others is $30. Registration is required and includes lunch and a reception. <_o3a_p>

"We see this as a wonderful opportunity for faculty on campus to meet one another as well as colleagues nearby," says Jamie Rowen, associate professor of legal studies and political science, and director of the center. "We will have an afternoon of two plenaries with leading scholars from the region talking about law and public-facing research, as well as law, democracy and authoritarianism. These topics should be of interest to any faculty and graduate students who are interested in current legal and political challenges and how to address them."<_o3a_p>

The session on public-facing research will feature Supreme Court scholar Paul Collins, associate professor of legal studies and political science at UMass Amherst; policing scholar Lorenzo Boyd, of the University of New Haven; MacArthur Fellow and gun scholar Jennifer Carlson, of Arizona State University; and criminal legal scholar Giza Lopes, of the University at Albany.<_o3a_p>

The plenary on law and democracy will feature public opinion and democratic institutions scholar Peter K. Enns, of Cornell University; human rights scholar Janice Gallagher, of Rutgers University-Newark; law and political economy scholar Amy Kapczynski, of Yale University; and social movements scholar Poulami Roychowdhury, of Brown University.<_o3a_p>

Based at UMass Amherst, LSA is an interdisciplinary scholarly organization committed to social scientific, interpretive and historical analyses of law across multiple social contexts.<_o3a_p>