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Lynn Mather has been director of the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy since November. She joined the UB Law School faculty in July.
What is the Baldy Center for Law & Social Policy?
The Baldy Center is an interdisciplinary research center for the study of law and legal institutions. More than 100 faculty at the university are involved in Baldy activities, from 17 different departments around campus. The center also provides support for graduate students who are pursuing advanced degree,s both in law and in other fields.
Who was Christopher Baldy?
Christopher Baldy was a successful Buffalo lawyer and an alumnus of the university. He left his estate to the university and some of the funds were used to create the Baldy Center for Law & Social Policy. The center was established in 1978.
Describe the research activities at the center.
Research activities are currently organized into clusters of faculty in eight different areas: Children, Families and the Law; Community and Identity; Gender, Law and Social Policy; International and Comparative Legal Studies; Regulation and Public Policy; Environmental Stewardship; Law and Religion, and Law, Technology and Society. Through these groups, individual faculty receive funding for research projects, present their work in progress and invite outside scholars to campus. Additional research activities are organized Baldy-wide, through collective workshops and conferences or through co-sponsorship with other groups at the university. We have offered short courses to law and graduate students stemming from the research interests of the faculty. We also host an annual regional sociolegal conference, which includes scholars from Canada and from the broader region. Finally, the Baldy Center is the home of the internationally recognized sociolegal journal, Law and Policy.
You left an endowed professorship at Dartmouth to come to the UB Law School. What was it about UB Law and/or the Baldy Center that brought you here?
I had known about the Baldy Center for decades due to its outstanding tradition of sociolegal scholarship and the many prominent law and society scholars here. When I directed the Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth, I discovered that I really enjoyed the organizational challenge of bringing diverse faculty together to share their research. I also had been working to develop an interdisciplinary Legal Studies program there. When I visited Buffalo, I found so many terrific sociolegal scholars here, along with a well-established program, so this just seemed like a wonderful opportunity for me. Plus, it was great to be able to join a law faculty since all of my own research has centered on lawyers, courts or issues of law and policy. I also can continue to work with political scientists, as there are a number of important law and courts political scientists at UB.
What plans do you have for the Baldy Center?
I would like to expand the current research activities and also experiment with new ideas. For example, we are inaugurating Book Manuscript Workshops this spring to provide intense discussion and feedback to authors on a nearly completed book draft. Finishing a book is a long and lonely process, but this should make the ending fun, as well as helping to produce stronger manuscripts. We also are soliciting suggestions from the faculty for a seminar series for next year that will bring a variety of scholars to campus. I also am encouraging collaboration among faculty that might lead to joint research grants. UB has tremendous strength in interdisciplinary legal scholarship and I think there are ways that we can build on it and also strengthen its visibility. Another initiative is to help graduate students who are pursuing study in law and in another discipline, such as political science, economics, or sociology. These dual- and collaborative-degree students sometimes face unnecessary bureaucratic hassles as they move from one school to another. This is a shame for a university with such a strong commitment to interdisciplinary study. I hope that the Baldy Center can help these graduate students through organized colloquia, coordination in faculty advising and courses on sociolegal topics. I have enjoyed working with the Baldy Advisory Committee and the directors of the research programs and working groups to brainstorm new ideas.
The center has several conferences coming up within the next several months. Tell me about them.
Well, we have just completed a particularly successful one this past weekend. Organized by Sharmista Bagchi-Sen from the Department of Geography and Shubha Ghosh from the Law School, this conference on "Law, Technology and Development" brought together distinguished scholars from around the world to address issues of intellectual property, regulation, technology transfer and globalization. Earlier this year, we held fascinating conferences on "Financing the Next Generation of Community Development," "Locked Up, Then Locked Out: Prisoners' Civil Disabilities" and "Building Politics: Law, Institutions and Democratic Theory—An Initial Conversation." Our next conference will be the Regional Sociolegal Studies Conference on May 2 and we are just planning that now. We also are reviewing suggestions and proposals for next year's events. In late May, we will host a workshop on "Dialogue on Multicultural and Diversity Policies: Canada and the U.S.," organized by faculty from the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy.
What question do you wish I had asked, and how would you have answered it?
"Are you glad that you became the Baldy Center director?" Absolutely! We have a great staff and outstanding faculty.