Elizabeth Mertz
John and Rylla Bosshard Professor of Law
E-mail: eemertz@wisc.edu
E-mail: emertz@abfn.org
Telephone: 263-7419
Office: Room 6108, Law School
Education:
Ph.D., Duke University (Anthropology)
J.D., Northwestern University School of Law
Teaching Areas:
Family Law
Law & Society
Legal Education
Legal Processes
Research Interests:
Legal education, legal profession
Law & social science, legal anthropology
Family law, violence in families
The new legal realism, translating law
Biography
Joint Appointment with American Bar Foundation
Professor Mertz is a leading legal anthropologist, and a
pioneer in the field of law and language. She uses this background to study legal language in the United States, with a special focus on law school education. Her research also examines the problems involved in translating between law and social science, particularly in
the domain of family law. In addition to her position on the faculty of
the University of
Wisconsin, she is a Senior
Research Fellow at the American Bar Foundation, where she has conducted empirical research on legal education. The results of this research have appeared in
numerous journals and edited collections. Her
book, The Language of Law School: Learning to “Think Like a Lawyer” (Oxford University Press) was 2008 co-winner of the Herbert Jacob Book Prize, awarded by the Law & Society Association for "distinguished work that fulfills the high expectations of interdisciplinary scholarship that define this association." Mertz's study has drawn national attention from
scholars interested in reforming the current system of legal education in the U.S.
As a law student, Professor Mertz won the John Paul Stevens Prize for graduating first in her class, the Lowden-Wigmore Prize for best student-written law review article, and the Wigmore Fellowship. She clerked for Judge Richard D. Cudahy, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and served as a PILI Fellow at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights under Law. Before attending law school, she earned a Ph.D. in Anthropology and held the position of Project Director for the Law & Language Project at the Center for Psychosocial Studies, in Chicago.
In recognition of her work at the intersection of law and social science, Professor Mertz was elected a Fellow of the American Anthropological Association, as well as Treasurer of the Law & Society Association. She served for many years as Editor of Law & Social Inquiry, and is currently Editor of PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review. Her writings on family violence and law, legal translations, and other topics have appeared in such publications as the Harvard Law Review, Law & Society Review, and the Annual Review of Anthropology. Along with other scholars, she is active in the New Legal Realism Project (www.newlegalrealism.org), which spearheaded a collaborative research network on “Realist and Empirical Methods” under the aegis of the Law & Society Association. Professor Mertz is delighted to be a member of the community at the UW Law School, which has for generations led the way in studying and teaching the law in action.
Publications
Recent Books
[Mertz, ed.] The Use of Social Science in Legal Decisions (Ashgate, 2008)
The Language of Law School: Learning to "Think" Like a Lawyer (Oxford University Press, 2007)
[Macaulay, Friedman, & Mertz, eds.] Law in Action: A Socio-Legal Reader (Thomson-West, 2007)
[Greenhouse, Mertz, & Warren, eds.] Transforming States: Ethnographies of Subjectivity and Agency in Changing Political Contexts. (Duke University Press, 2006)
Selected Recent Publications
“Inside the Law School Classroom: Toward a New Legal Realist Pedagogy,” 60 Vanderbilt Law Review 483 (2007)
“Translating Science into Family Law,” 56 DePaul Law Review 799 (2007)
“Anthropology of Law,” Encyclopedia of Law and Society: American and Global Perspectives, D. Clark, ed. (Sage, 2007) [with Mark Goodale]
“Semiotic Anthropology,” in 36 Annual Review of Anthropology (2007)
“The Empirical Turn in the Legal Academy: A New Legal Realist Perspective,” Law & Society Newsletter, Nov. 2006, p. 4-5 [with Thomas Mitchell]
“A Tribute to Clifford Geertz.” Brief obituary for the Empirical Legal Studies Blog. www.elsblog.org (November 2006)
“Roundtable - New Legal Realism, Micro-Analysis of Institutions, and the New Governance: Exploring Convergences and Differences,” 2005 Wisconsin Law Review 479-518 [with Joel Handler, Orly Lobel, Edward Rubin, and William Simon]
“Introduction: New Legal Realist Methods,” 2005 Wisconsin Law Review 335 [with Howard Erlanger, Bryant Garth, Victoria Nourse, and David Wilkins]
