From legal realism to law and society: Reshaping law for the last stages of the social activist state

Law & Society Review, 1998 by Garth, Bryant, Sterling, Joyce

22 Moore, Ross, and Sykes were hired jointly with sociology, which helped establish legal sociology as central to the department in Denver. Ross left to become the second director of the Law and Social Science Program of the National Science Foundation, succeeding David Baldus of Iowa (1975-76). Yegge also hired a psychologist, Murray Blumenthal.

23 Recalling Harry Ball's enthusiasm for a formal organization, going beyond the informal meetings that had gone on for a couple of years at ASA meetings, he quoted Ball as saying "why not attack these people," and "let's not let the law school hierarchy tell us we don't know what we're talking about. Let's make this a respectable academic endeavor, because we've got a lot of respectable people in the academy who are interested and if we show some kind of strength, maybe law schools would wake up and say, hey, maybe this isn't so screwy after all."

24 The AALS executive helped Yegge bring professors to the program: "We had a lot of help from Millard Ruud [the executive director of AALS]. He was touting us. He could have killed us, but . . . it was now a legitimate activity for law professors to be engaged in."

Among those who attended were: William Felstiner, Robert Stein, Thomas Heller, Philip Shuchman, Lester Brickman, James J. White, Justin Sweet, James Henderson, and Frank Michelman. The early success, in Yegge's view, was confirmed at an early meeting of the LSA group at the Harvard Law School when Dean Derek Bok suggested (erroneously, of course), "Isn't it marvelous how we started all of this." For Yegge, it was clear that LSA had made the law school establishment take notice of and recognize not only LSA but also Denver-and the national role he was establishing for a local law school he joined mainly because of his family ties.

26 The group of scholars Yegge encountered at Princeton may have flourished there in part because there was no law school to absorb or attempt to marginalize them. There were at least three attempts to build a law school at Princeton (Stevens 1983:250). According to Stevens, Princeton in 1975 decided once again not to create a law school.

27 E.g., Alpheus Mason & William Beaney, American Constitutional Law (1964); see also Beaney's Right to Counsel in American Courts (1959). Beaney studied law at Harvard Law School before obtaining his Ph.D. in political science at Michigan.

28 A political scientist at Minnesota, who became the second editor of the Review and the LSA President. See Krislov, The Negro in Federal Employment: The Quest for Equal Opportunity (1967); The Supreme Court and Political Freedom (1968).

29 Described by Willard Hurst as one of the very few law professors to maintain the Realist interest in social science. Levi went on to become president of the University of Chicago. We have not focused our account on the University of Chicago, but it is clear that it was a leader in the 1950s. According to Rita Simon, who was both a Fellow in the Law and Behavioral Science Project and an assistant professor in sociology from 1957 to 1961, Levi was personally very supportive: "the law school was a very exciting place," although "most of the faculty was very skeptical of this behavioral science." In contrast, "economics was accepted."