Chicago-Kent Professor Elected to LSA Board of Trustees

“Law never operates in a vacuum,” says Chicago-Kent College of Law Professor Christopher W. Schmidt. “Law is always informed by and affecting things outside of formal legal institutions.”

That crossover of law and other disciplines is the backbone of the Law and Society Association, which is described as an “interdisciplinary scholarly organization committed to social scientific, interpretive, and historical analyses of law across multiple social contexts,” according to the group’s website.

Schmidt was recently elected to serve a three-year term on the society’s Board of Trustees.

“There are people from all different disciplines—sociologists, economists, political scientists, anthropologists—pretty much from across the board,” he says. “The Law and Society Association brings together people from all around the world, from all across universities and disciplines, to have shared conversations about how law actually operates in the world.”

Schmidt is a trained legal historian, with a focus on the relationship between social movements, legal institutions, and constitutional change in the twentieth century. He’s currently writing a book on the history of the U.S. Supreme Court and its changing place in American political life. In addition to his work at Chicago-Kent, he is also a research professor at the American Bar Foundation, an institute that is committed to exploring the intersection of law and society in order to create a more equitable world. In that role, he’s served for 10 years as editor of ABF’s scholarly journal, Law & Social Inquiry.

“As we move through our academic careers, it’s important to try and step up and play roles where you can help guide the future direction of different institutions. I’m particularly interested in helping to open doors for people just getting into the academic world,” says Schmidt.