American Bar Foundation

Speaker Series: Jill Horwitz - ABF Recent crises—the pandemic, natural disasters, and political targeting—have caused enormous suffering, sparing no one, including charities. Even over the past few years, they have faced extreme…

Tomorrow, 2/18, Law and Emergency Medicine professor, @jillh.bsky.social of Northwestern University, will lead the ABF Speaker Series on “Is the Endowment for Us?” Horwitz discusses legal restrictions of endowment funds for charities during a crisis.

🔗: www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speake...

Speaker Series: katrina quisumbing king - ABF In 1898 the United States became a formal overseas empire and claimed sovereignty over the Philippine islands, justifying its rule in explicitly racial terms. Less than fifty years later, in 1946…

This Wednesday, 2/11, Assistant Professor Katrina Quisumbing King, of Northwestern University will lead the ABF Speaker Series on "Enduring Empire: U.S. Statecraft and Race-Making in the Philippines."

🔗: www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speake...

Fellows Events at the 2026 Midyear Meeting in San Antonio - ABF A $30 registration fee is required and helps cover administrative costs associated with the Midyear Meeting Early registration: Tickets are discounted through January 16 ABF Fellows On-Site…

Congrats to the 2026 Fellows of the American Bar Foundation Award recipients! 🎉 Rachel Moran (Outstanding Scholar); Stephen Bain and Joi Kush (Outstanding State Chairs); and William C. Hubbard (Outstanding Service) will be honored tonight at the Fellows Awards Reception at #ABAMidyear San Antonio!

Read more of Schmidt's work on how the Supreme Court—once a relatively quiet institution operating far from public view—has come to command daily headlines and intense public scrutiny in this recent issue of ABF's newsletter, Researching Law: www.americanbarfoundation.org/wp-content/u... #ABAMidyear

Happening today! 📅 If you’re at #ABAMidyear in San Antonio, a reminder to join us 2:00 PM for this year's Fellows CLE w/ ABF Research Prof. Christopher Schmidt, Mario Barnes of @ucirvinelaw.bsky.social, and Paul Smith of @campaignlegal.org on "The Supreme Court and the Second Trump Administration."

Speaker Series: Stephanie Holmes Didwania - ABF Asset forfeiture laws allow law enforcement agencies to permanently take property that is thought to be connected to criminal activity. Every year, federal and state governments acquire billions of…

Tomorrow, 1/28, Stephanie Holmes Didwania of Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, will lead the ABF Speaker Series on, "Perceived Fairness and Excess in Asset Forfeiture."
Discussing asset forfeiture laws and public perception.
🔗: www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speake...

Speaker Series: Jessica Greenberg - ABF This talk draws from Greenberg’s recent ethnographic monograph: Justice in the Balance: Democracy, Rule of Law and the European Court of Human Rights. Greenberg will discuss the practices…

Tomorrow, 1/21, Jessica Greenberg of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, will lead the ABF Speaker Series on, "What is the Rule of Law and Can it be saved: Lessons from the European Court of Human Rights"

🔗: www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speake...

Congratulations to Mariano-Florentino who will return to Stanford University to serve as CASBS director.

Florentino served on the ABF Board of Directors from 2013 to 2015, before which he was a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow in 1992.

One week left to apply!

Applications are closing soon for the 2026 ABF Summer Undergraduate Research Fellows program. Open to current sophomores & juniors interested in sociolegal research.

📍 Chicago (hybrid) | June 8 – July 31, 2026
35 hrs/week | $6,000 stipend

🗓 Deadline: Jan. 16, 2026

YouTube video by e-flux Videos African Film Institute: Amelia Umuhire, Natacha Nsabimana, and Christian Nyampeta

Listen in on ABF Research Prof. Natacha Nsabimana's conversation with Rwandan filmmaker Amelia Umuhire on a new episode of the @eflux.bsky.social podcast. Highlighting two works by Umuhire.

Listen here
🔗: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8x-Y...

Thank you to NAPABA for welcoming ABF to its 2025 convention, where we hosted a reception for Portrait Project 2.0 w/ remarks by ABF Research Prof. Ajay Mehrotra and Hon. Goodwin Liu on why Asian Americans remain underrepresented in the legal profession.
www.americanbarfoundation.org/projects/por...

What to read and watch over winter break 2025 Add these picks from UChicago award winners to your list

"The film’s feminist themes, which include misogyny in the criminal legal system and reproductive autonomy, are remarkably nuanced and compassionate, especially for its time."

ABF Doctoral Fellow Anna Fox on what to watch over the 2025 winter break.

🔗: news.uchicago.edu/story/what-r...

Global Reflections on Positionality in Rural Access to Justice Research This book offers a unique look at rural access to justice through a series of personal and professional reflections by leading scholars in the field. Engaging a…

"Global Reflections on Positionality in Rural Access to Justice Research" — edited by ABF Affiliated Scholar Michele Statz — examines rural access to justice through reflections from leading scholars, including several ABF Research Professors.

🔗: www.bloomsbury.com/us/global-re...

What Northwestern accepted from the Trump administration to get back $790M in research funds Northwestern’s president argues that the school didn’t cross any “red lines” in an agreement that closed multiple federal investigations and terminated a deal with students to end a pro-Palestinian en...

ABF Research Prof. @lbthatsme.bsky.social offers insight on what Northwestern's regained $790M in research funds from the Trump administration might mean — raising concerns about academic freedom and institutional independence.

🔗: www.nprillinois.org/education-de...

Speaker Series: Jose Atiles - ABF Crisis by Design offers an interdisciplinary sociolegal analysis of the role of law, emergency powers, and anticorruption mobilizations in Puerto Rico’s ongoing multilayered crisis.

Tomorrow, 12/3, @joseatiles.bsky.social, of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, will lead the ABF Speaker Series on "Crisis by Design: Emergency Powers and Colonial Legality in Puerto Rico."

🔗: www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speake...

Speaker Series: Gino Pauselli - ABF How does institutional design affect non-state actors’ preferences for international organizations (IOs)? We develop a theory of strategic forum shopping, where non-state actors choose the most…

This Wednesday, 11/19, Assistant Professor @ginopauselli.bsky.social, of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, will lead the ABF Speaker Series on "Finding the Right Forum: Non-State Actor Engagement in International Organizations."

🔗: www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speake...

Speaker Series: Shauhin Talesh - ABF Despite the massive costs associated with data breaches, ransomware, viruses, and cyberattacks, most organizations remain thoroughly unprepared to safeguard consumer data. Over the past two decades…

On Wednesday, 11/12, @ucirvinelaw.bsky.social Prof. Shauhin Talesh will lead the ABF Speaker Series on 'Insuring Cyberinsecurity: Insurance Companies as Symbolic Regulators.'

November 12 at 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm CST

🔗: www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speake...

🚨In a new @entitledpodcast.bsky.social, ABF Research Prof. @tomginsburg.bsky.social discusses how sanctions are being used and abused by the Trump administration, and how other UN members are responding to the sanctioning of their colleagues for speaking out.

The American Bar Foundation (ABF) is seeking its next Executive Director. Join one of the world’s leading institutes for the empirical and interdisciplinary study of law in advancing justice and shaping the future of sociolegal research.

📍 Chicago, IL
Learn More: www.imsearch.com/open-searche...

ABF Access to Justice Research Initiative Early-Career Workshop at American Bar Foundation ABF Access to Justice Research Initiative Early-Career Workshop Deadline: Monday, November 24, 2025 About the ABF Access to Justice Research Initiative The American Bar Foundation’s Access to Justice ...

🚨If you are an early-career scholar who researches civil justice topics -- please consider applying to join our next cohort! Participants join an awesome community of A2J scholars (& receive a research stipend!).

Applications due November 24 (bit.ly/abfecw)
@abfresearch.bsky.social

National Fellows Webinar - ABF This event is free to attend. Open to Fellows and nominees only. 11:00am PT / 12:00pm MT / 1:00pm CT / 2:00pm ET “The Legal Profession and the Rule of Law in Asia” Challenges to the rule of law in the...

Please join us today at 1:00 pm CT / 2:00pm ET for our National Fellows Webinar, "The Legal Profession and the Rule of Law in Asia," featuring Terry Halliday, Jothie Rajah, Sital Kalantry and moderated by David K.Y. Tang.

🔗: www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/nation...

Speaker Series: Grigory Gorbun - ABF

Tomorrow, 10/22, ABF Speaker Series will be led by ABF/AccessLex Institute Postdoctoral Fellow in Legal and Higher Education, Grigory Gorbun. Gorbun will argue that moot courts shift the grounds of law’s authority away from state sovereignty and toward a transnational legal professional community.

Fuzzy Boundaries: A Mechanism for Group Accumulation of Advantage - Heba Alex, 2025 This article describes a strategic mechanism, fuzzy boundaries, that groups use to accumulate advantage. In contrast to the dominant view that rigid, well-defin...

Alex Heba, a former ABF Doctoral Fellow, recently published, "Fuzzy Boundaries: A Mechanism for Group Accumulation of Advantage," which examines the evaluation of the "good moral character" qualification of lawyers’ licensing laws.

Learn more:
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

36th Annual Leopold Lecture: Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences - Northwestern University

Tuesday, October 21, 2025, Northwestern's 36th Annual Leopold Lecture will be moderated by ABF Research Prof. @lbthatsme.bsky.social—featuring @npr.org's Award-Winning Legal Affairs Correspondent and author @ninatotenberg.bsky.social

🎟️ Get tickets:
weinberg.northwestern.edu/about/events...

Speaker Series: Kris Rosentel, Anna Fox - ABF Kris Rosentel Covalent Logics: Policing, Family Values, and the Reproduction of Inequality by Anna Fox How do organizations justify their role in reproducing inequality when established institutional…

Tomorrow, 10/15, ABF Speaker Series will be led by ABF/Northwestern Doctoral Fellow in Law and Social Science, Kris Rosentel, and ABF/UChicago Doctoral Fellow in Law and Social Science, @annafox.bsky.social.

Topics on policing, inequality, and more.
🔗: www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speake...

🚀 Day 2 of the @opengovpartnership.org Global Summit 🚀

Today, we learned about:
🇸🇱 The national justice efforts in Sierra Leone.
💰 #JusticeActionCoalition’s work on the economic case for #PeopleCenteredJustice and people-centered justice data, led by @oecd-ocde.bsky.social.

Speaker Series: Ellie Frazier - ABF Over the past three decades, programs training nonlawyers, such as limited licensed practitioners (LLPs) and community justice workers (CJWs), have arisen in the United State in response to access to…

This Wed., 10/8, ABF Speaker Series will be led by ABF/AccessLex Institute Postdoctoral Fellow in Legal and Higher Education, Ellie Frazier—on, "Pathways to Justice Work: Nonlawyer Educational Choices, Identities, and Professionalization in the U.S."

🔗: www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speake...

2026 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship at American Bar Foundation The Opportunity The American Bar Foundation (ABF) is accepting applications for the 2026 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF), an eight-week program that offers hands-on experience and expo...

We are pleased to announce that we are now accepting applications for the 2026 cohort of Summer Undergraduate Research Fellows!

Open to current college sophomores and juniors, applications will be open until January 16, 2026.

Learn more!
🔗: american-bar-foundation.breezy.hr/p/cf1b8602f9...

YouTube video by LawNext Justice Workers: Access to Justice as Democracy Work, with Rebecca Sandefur and Matthew Burnett

On Law Next: "Justice Workers — Reimagining Access to Justice as Democracy Work"

The ABF's Rebecca L. Sandefur & Matthew Burnett argue that the justice gap is a "crisis of democracy," and that trained community justice workers may hold the solution.

🎙️ Watch here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eofZ...

Speaker Series: Christopher Robertson & Jane Y. Jeong - ABF Christopher Robertson At the Borders of Belonging: Asian American Immigrant Families, Disability, and the Governance of Conditional Futures by Jane Y. Jeong Asian American immigrant students with…

Next Wed., 10/1, ABF Speaker Series will be led by ABF/LSA Doctoral Fellow in Law & Inequality Christopher Robertson, and ABF/AccessLex Institute Doctoral Fellow in Legal & Higher Education Jane Y. Jeong.

🔗: www.americanbarfoundation.org/event/speake...