Annual Reports

The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy

ANNUAL REPORT: 2020-2021

I. Center Overview
a. History
Created in 1978 under a bequest from Buffalo attorney Christopher Baldy, The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy supports interdisciplinary research on law, legal institutions and social policy throughout the University at Buffalo. The Center engages faculty and students campus-wide, and has national and international impact through the scholarly publications, conferences, workshops, online multimedia, and other activities described in this report. The Center is housed in the School of Law, University at Buffalo.

b. Organization and Staff

Baldy Center Advisory Council 2020-2021

Anya Bernstein, Law; Guyora Binder, Law; Matthew Dimick, Law; Trina Hamilton, Geography; Rachael Hinkle, Political Science; Joanne Song McLaughlin, Economics; Mateo Taussig-Rubbo, Law

Baldy Center Staff 2020-2021

Staff
Samantha Barbas, Director; Caroline Funk, Associate Director; Laura Wirth, Assistant Director

Student assistants
Aldiama Anthony, SOL; Rebecca Dingle CAS; Cecilia Meyer, Law; Azalia Muchransyah, CAS

Work Study Students: Jay Carreira, CAS; Alexis Cohen, CAS; Temara Cross, CAS; Ivomir Georgiev, Law; Tony Jiang, CAS

Extra Service

Debra Kolodczak, CAS, Website Designer

II. Research Support and Fellowships

a. Faculty Conference Grants

Irus Braverman (UB School of Law), Jim Bono (UB History), Paul Vanouse (UB Art), and Lucinda Cole (University of Illinois, English): Medical Posthumanities: Governing Health Beyond the Human

Matthew Dimick (UB School of Law): Marx and Legal Theory

Marion Werner (UB Geography): Global Glyphosate: New Challenges in Regulating Pervasive Chemicals in the Anthropocene

b. Faculty Research Grants

Sharmistha Bagchi-Sen (UB Geography): Contextualizing shrinking places within the broader U.S. economy

Anya Bernstein (UB School of Law): The Human State: Making Regulation and Policy in Germany

Irus Braverman (UB School of Law): Beastly Legalities: Wild Life and Law in Palestine/Israel

Fiona Critelli (UB School of Social Work): #MeToo and the Implementation of Sexual Harassment Legislation in Pakistan: Moving from Law to Practice

Rebecca French (UB School of Law): Buddhism and Law Reader

Amy Semet (UB School of Law): Law An Empirical Analysis of Intellectual Property Law and the Administrative State

c. Baldy Center Fellowships in Interdisciplinary Legal Studies

The Baldy Center continued its fellowship program for scholars pursuing important topics in law, legal institutions, and social policy during the 2020-2021 academic year. Fellows are expected to participate regularly in Baldy Center events, but otherwise have no obligations beyond vigorously pursuing their research. Fellows receive standard university research privileges (library, Internet, office space, computer, phone) and are encouraged to develop collaborative research projects with University at Buffalo faculty members where appropriate.

2020-2021 Postdoctoral Fellows

Sarah Ludin, 2019-2021 Postdoctoral Fellow, earned her Ph.D. in Jurisprudence and Social Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. She is a socio-legal historian of the early modern German-speaking lands, with a special interest in law and religion, secularity and secularism, legal phenomenology and difference, and law and language. Her dissertation, “The Reformation Suits: Litigation as Constitution-Making in a German Imperial Court, 1521-1555” reconsiders the role of civil litigation in the early Reformation in Germany, long regarded as an instance of the instrumentalization of law by “old-faith” authorities against the Protestants. Sarah’s research shows how experimental uses of mundane, formulaic legal instruments of Roman law civil procedure fused with the legal culture and legal pluralism of the German lands, such that the litigation context became an unexpected proxy for the most pressing constitutional questions of the early Reformation. Ludin used her time at The Baldy Center to revise her dissertation into a book manuscript, to complete a journal article based on material from her dissertation, and to begin to develop her next research project.

2019-2020 Postdoctoral Fellows

Daniel Platt, Baldy Center Postdoctoral Fellow 2018-2020, earned his Ph.D. in American Studies at Brown University. His research considers the history of capitalism in the United States, asking how commodities are created by the law and how race and gender ideologies shape such fabrications, particularly when they implicate the integrity of labor and the home. These concerns lie at the heart of his current manuscript, The Debt Question in Modern America, under contract with University of Chicago Press. The study examines how a diverse galley of Gilded Age and Progressive Era Americans, including freed people, feminists, and social reformers, debated what could be pledged in the financial marketplace and what should be forbidden. As these figures wrestled over the morality of mortgaging land, home goods, and labor power, all under the long shadow of slave emancipation, they confronted rivalrous notions of the economic freedoms understood to be most natural to men and women, black people and white. The Debt Question in Modern America traces how deeply conservative visions of social hierarchy were summoned to legitimize an expanding realm of financial exchange. Further, it shows how such hierarchies were nourished in stride by a new discourse of financial risk. Following his term at The Baldy Center, Platt was appointed assistant professor, University of Illinois Springfield, Legal Studies.

2020-2021 Senior Fellows

Marie Jauffret-Roustide, a Baldy Center Senior Fellow until Spring 2022, is a Research Fellow at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) in France, Paris. She has a multidisciplinary background: she holds a Master’s Degree in Political Science, a PhD in sociology and social science and an “Habilitation” to supervise research in public health and social science. She is the leader of an international comparative research on the history of harm reduction between France and the United States. Dr. Jauffret-Roustide will analyze three representative contemporary drug policy issues affecting both North America (specifically the United States) and partially Europe (France) during her Baldy Center fellowship: the history of opioid substitutive treatments, the opioid overdose crisis, and the controversy on drug consumption rooms.  Jauffret-Roustide is an Awardee of the 2019 French Scholar Lecture Series, Peter Wall Institute, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

2020-2021 Research Fellows

Matthew Bach is researching the changing role of oil and gas firms in climate change governance with a focus on the factors driving their engagement, the positions that they are taking, and the mechanisms and pathways that they are deploying in relation to climate crisis governance. Since 2017, Matthew has been a governance programme officer for ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, a global city network, where he leads a Horizon 2020 grant from the European Commission, which develops solutions for sustainable and just cities.

Daniel Brantes Ferreira is a professor at Universidade Cândido Mendes and Vice-President for Academic affairs at the Brazilian Center of Arbitration and Mediation (CBMA), where he is an arbitrator. Daniel is also President of the Brazilian Bar Association, Rio de Janeiro Section, Legislative Affairs Commission. Research topics: legal theory, legal history, legal education, comparative studies, and Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). Daniel is a partner at Bruno Freire Law Firm where he practices labor law and torts. At The Baldy Center he is researching American Legal Realism. In January 2021, Brantes Ferreira was interviewed by Brazil's major newspaper, Estadáo, about his perspective on Trump’s call to Raffensperger and it’s legal repercussions.

Jennifer L. Gaynor works on Southeast Asia and its surrounding seas from the seventeenth century to the present. The author of Intertidal History in Island Southeast Asia: Submerged Genealogy and the Legacy of Coastal Capture  (Cornell University Press, 2016), she has contributed chapters to a number of books, including Blue Legalities (Duke University Press, 2020), edited by Irus Braverman and Elizabeth R. Johnson. Building on her previous research, her current book projects examine the history of capture, slavery, and piracy in maritime Asia, as well as the recent history of global land reclamation.

Paul Linden-Retek is a UB Law Lecturer in Law & Society and a Research Fellow at The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy. Paul earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University in 2018 and his J.D. from Yale Law School in 2012. He is a Schell Center Visiting Human Rights Fellow at Yale Law School. In 2019-20, Paul was a Post-doctoral Emile Noël Global Fellow at the Jean Monnet Center for International and Regional Economic Law & Justice, New York University School of Law.

Charles J. Whalen, an economist with a career spanning three decades, has contributed to national economic policy discussions, equitable regional development, and business success. During his appointment at The Baldy Center, Whalen has been active—as president (2018), past president (2019), and trustee (2020-)—in the Association for Evolutionary Economics. Last year, Whalens AFEE presidential address—on reclaiming the right to work as a progressive cause—appeared (in versions of varying length) in Buffalo Legal Studies Research Paper Series, Journal of Economic Issues, and Challenge (an economics bimonthly). Whalen is currently editing two books.

III. Multimedia

The Baldy Center developed and launched new online initiatives during 2020-2021. The new media products facilitated scholarly communication and outreach during pandemic restrictions on travel and in-person engagement.

Podcast

The Baldy Center launched its blog in the Fall, 2020 semester, produced by Fulbright scholar Azalia Muchransyah (PhD ’21 Media Studies) a filmmaker, writer, and scholar from Indonesia. The podcast highlights UB faculty research and perspectives on current issues and events. We focus on UB’s interdisciplinary scholars of law, legal institutions, and social policy.

2020-2021 Podcast Episodes:
Episode 1: Mark Bartholomew discusses contact tracing
Episode 2: Irus Braverman discusses medical posthumanities
Episode 3: David Westbrook and Mark Maguire discuss airport security and counterterrorism
Episode 4: Amanda Hughett discusses the history of prisoner labor unions
Episode 5: Jennifer Gaynor discusses maritime Southeast Asia
Episode 6: David Gerber and Bruce Dierenfield discuss disability rights and religious freedom
Episode 7: Daniel Platt discusses “The Domestication of Credit”
Episode 8: Sarah Ludin discusses the socio-legal history of the Early Reformation in Germany
Episode 9: Jessica Castner, “Nurse-Initiated Protocols in Emergency Departments”
Episode 10: Waverly Duck and Anne Rawls discuss their new book, Tacit Racism
Episode 11: Erkin Özay discusses his new book, Urban Renewal and School Reform in Baltimore: Rethinking the 21st Century Public School
Episode 12: Marie Jauffret-Roustide discusses harm reduction as an effective response to the opioid overdose crisis
Episode 13: Victoria-Idongesit Udondian discusses her sculptural work “The Republic of Unknown Territory” and immigration
Episode 14: Sustaining the Alison Des Forges International Symposia
Episode 15: Episode 15: Athena Mutua discusses ClassCrits origins and goals

Blog

The Baldy Center launched its blog in the fall 2020 semester, produced by Aldiama Anthony (JD ’21). The blog features interdisciplinary perspectives on research and current events from interdisciplinary UB scholars whose work intersects with law, legal institutions, and social policy. New blogs are released twice a month during each semester.

2020-2021 Blog posts:
Blog 1. Silverman, Patterson, Wang: Taking on Stereotypes to Protect Fair and Affordable Housing Policies
Blog 2. Jinting Wu, Disability Segregation in an Age of Inclusion: Navigating Educational Pathways through Special Education Schools in Contemporary China
Blog 3. Matthew Steilen, The Place of Norms in Separating Power
Blog 4. Jaekyung Lee and Namsook Kim, “Aliens” on College Campuses: Immigrant and International Students’ Educational Opportunities and Challenges
Blog 5. Nadine Shaanta Murshid, Unprecedented Times
Blog 6. Elizabeth Bowen and Nicole Capozziello, A Human Rights Perspective on Homelessness and COVID-19
Blog 7. Laina Y. Bay-Cheng, No Choice But “Yes”: Strategic Consent to Unwanted Sex
Blog 8. Aldiama Anthony reflects on a study by Anya Bernstein, “Interpenetration of Powers: Channels and Obstacles for Populist Impulses”
Blog 9. Rachael K. Hinkle, Unintended Consequences. How the Publication Norm as a Tool of Compromise Reduces the Influence of Female and Minority Judges
Blog 10. Aldiama Anthony reflects on the article “School definitely failed me, the system failed me” — Identifying opportunities to impact educational outcomes for homeless and child welfare-involved youth
Blog 11. James Gardner reflects on the question "Is Democracy Possible Here?”
Blog 12. Matthew Steilen: Canon, Anticanon, and Anti-canonization in Constitutional Law
Blog 13. Aldiama Anthony reflects on the article, "Institutional Economics and Chock-Full Employment" by Charles J. Whalen
Blog 14. Matthew Dimick, Using Legal Rules to Reduce Income Inequality
Blog 15. Alexandra Harrington, COVID and Prisons: Grappling with the Effects of the Pandemic on Incarceration

Magazine

The Baldy Center launched its inaugural issue of the Baldy Center Magazine during the fall 2020 semester and its second issue during the spring semester. Fall magazine topics and themes addressed the resilience of the Center’s affiliates in adapting to advancing their important research in new and creative ways, since the start of the pandemic. The spring issue features the work of the Center’s affiliated scholars and shares an array of topics and subjects, all focused on themes of crisis and resolution.

Fall 2020 Issue (Volume 1, Issue 1)

Articles:
A Double Pandemic: Domestic Violence During COVID-19, by Aldiama Anthony
Living with Pervasive Agrichemicals, by Caroline Funk, PhD
Morris Ernst – Civil Liberties Pioneer, by Cecilia Meyer
From ‘Sight’ to ‘Site’: Wading the Waters of the Niagara River Corridor Ramsar Designation, by Laura Wirth
True Cost of a Pandemic: Bursting the Neoliberalist Bubble, by Cecilia Meyer
New Buddhist Outlooks from Old Buddhist Sources, by Rebecca Dingle
Reflecting on Two Years at the Baldy Center, by Daniel Platt, PhD, Baldy Center Postdoctoral Fellow in Interdisciplinary Legal Studies, 2018-2020
The problem is clearly multifaceted: police brutality and juror decision making, by Laura Wirth
Law and Policy Graduate Student Research Spotlight, Renee Mapp and her “From Welfare to College Degree: Reducing Aid Recidivism by Increasing Degree Attainment” study.
From the Fellows: Issues and developments in law and social policy, with comments from Daniel Brantes Ferreira, Jennifer Gaynor, Paul Linden-Retek, and Charles Whalen.
Demographics and Developing Social Policy, by Rebecca Dingle

Spring 2021 Issue (Volume 1, Issue 2)

Articles:
Why is there a War on Drugs? By Caroline Funk, PhD
When I Must Speak for You, How Will I know? By Laura Wirth
Alison Des Forges: A passion for justice, by Debra Kolodczak
Spring 2021 Baldy Center Podcast and Blog
Catalyzing New Law and Social Policy Research at UB
Intersectional Discrimination, with Joanne Song McLaughlin, by Rebecca Dingle
New Scholars in law and social policy at UB

IV. Speakers and Co-sponsored Events

March 5, 2021
Cosponsor of Virtual Book Talk: Hadar Aviram, UC Hastings Law presented “Yesterday’s Monsters The Manson Family Cases and the Illusion of Parole”

March 11, 2021
Cosponsor of Center for Diversity Innovation Talk: William A. Darity, PhD, and A. Kirsten Mullen presented “From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the 21st Century”

May 27, 2021
Cosponsor of Alison Des Forges International Symposium “COVID-19: Human Rights and International Cooperation”

V. Conferences and Workshops

April 14-16, 2021
“Medical Posthumanities: Governing Health Beyond the Human.” Organized by Irus Braverman.

June 25, 2021
“Workshop on Marx, Law, and the Administrative States.” Organized by Matthew Dimick.           


VI. Publications
SSRN Buffalo Legal Studies Research Paper Series

The Baldy Center and the SUNY Buffalo Law School co-sponsor an online series of working papers, called the Buffalo Legal Studies Research Paper Series. It is hosted and distributed by SSRN (Social Science Research Network) and provides an international, interdisciplinary audience for the law-related work of UB faculty and visiting scholars. The series is managed by John Beatty, Faculty Scholarship Outreach Librarian, Charles B. Sears Law Library, UB School of Law.

Citation Databases for Legal Scholarship: Ranking the Top 28 Law Faculties
University at Buffalo School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2020-018, 2021 Yale Conference on Citation and the Law
John Beatty

Wild Legalities: Animals and Settler Colonialism in Palestine/Israel
43 PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review (forthcoming 2021), DOI: 10.1111/plar.12419, University at Buffalo School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper Forthcoming
Irus Braverman

Federalism and the Limits of Subnational Political Heterogeneity
Wisconsin Law Review, Forthcoming, University at Buffalo School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2020-017
James A. Gardner

Oculta a plena vista: la geografÍa jurÍdica desde una perspectiva visual [Hidden in Plain View: Legal Geography from a Visual Perspective]
Irus Braverman. (2020). “Oculta a Plena Vista: La Geografía Jurídica Desde Una Perspectiva Visual.” In Braverman, Irus, Richard T. Ford, Mariana Valverde, and Maria Victoria Castro Cristancho. Derecho Y Geografía: Espacio, Poder Y Sistema Jurídico, 251-280. Bogotá D. C.: Siglo Del Hombre Editores., University at Buffalo School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper Forthcoming
Irus Braverman

Animals
Irus Braverman. (2020). “Animals.” In Mariana Valverde (ed.). Routledge Handbook for Law and Society (forthcoming)., University at Buffalo School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper Forthcoming
Irus Braverman

Corona and Climate: One Planet, One Health
Sydney Environment Institute. Opinion. , University at Buffalo School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper Forthcoming
Irus Braverman

Nof Kdumim: Remaking the Ancient Landscape in East Jerusalem's National Parks
Environment and Planning E 4(1): 109-134 (special issue)., University at Buffalo School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper 2020-014
Irus Braverman

Environmental Justice, Settler Colonialism, and More-than-Humans in the Occupied West Bank: An Introduction
Environment and Planning E 4(1): 3-27 (special issue)., University at Buffalo School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper 2020-013
Irus Braverman

Zoo Veterinarians Gone Wild: Meddling as Methodology in Times of Crisis
Irus Braverman. (2021). “Zoo Veterinarians Gone Wild: Meddling as Methodology in Times of Crisis.” In Irus Braverman, Zoo Veterinarians: Governing Care on a Diseased Planet (Routledge)., University at Buffalo School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2020-015
Irus Braverman

Fleshy Encounters: Meddling in the Lifeworlds of Zoo and Aquarium Veterinarians
University at Buffalo School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2020-012, Humanimalia 11(2): 49-75 (2020).
Irus Braverman

Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues in the Earth BioGenome Project
University of Illinois College of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 21-10, University at Buffalo School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2020-013
Jacob S. Sherkow, Katharine Barker, Irus Braverman, Bob Cook-Deegan, Richard Durbin, Carla Easter, Melissa Goldstein, Maui Hudson, W. John Kress, Harris Lewin, Debra J.H. Mathews, Catherine McCarthy, Ann McCartney, Manuela da Silva, Andrew W. Torrance and Henry T. Greely

Law and Economics Against Feminism
Accepted for OXFORD HANDBOOK ON FEMINISM AND LAW IN THE U.S., Deborah L. Brake, Martha Chamallas, and Verna L. Williams, eds. , University at Buffalo School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2020-009
Martha T. McCluskey

What Counts as Data? (Symposium on Data-Driven Methods in Legal Interpretation)
Brooklyn Law Review , Vol. 86, 2021, University at Buffalo School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2020-010
Anya Bernstein

Technologies of Language Meet Ideologies of Law (Symposium: Law, Language, and Technology)
Michigan State Law Review, Vol. 2020, 2021, University at Buffalo School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper 2020-011
Anya Bernstein

“Don’t Blame Stokely Carmichael”: The Need for Federal Fair Housing Leadership
29 J. Affordable Housing & Community Dev. L. 555 (2021), University at Buffalo School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2020-008
Heather R. Abraham

Normativity and Objectivity in Historical Writing (My Dinner with Schlegel)
Buffalo Law Review Vol. 69, No. 1
Matthew J. Steilen

Copyright and the Brain
Washington University Law Review, Vol. 98, No. 2, 2020, p.525, University at Buffalo School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2020-006
Mark Bartholomew

The Illiberalization of American Election Law: A Study in Democratic Deconsolidation
University at Buffalo School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2020-003
James A. Gardner

Disbanding Police Agencies
121 Columbia Law Review (2021, Forthcoming), UNC Legal Studies Research Paper , University at Buffalo School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2020-004
Anthony O'Rourke, Rick Su and Guyora Binder

Judicial Populism
University at Buffalo School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2020-005, 109 Minnesota Law Review ___ (Forthcoming 2021)
Anya Bernstein and Glen Staszewski

Strongmen and Neurotics: Visible Struggle and the Construction of Judicial Ethos
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy: The Rhetoric of Liberty (David M. Frank and Francis J. Mootz, III, eds.) (PSU Press, 2021 Forthcoming), University at Buffalo School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2020-002
James A. Gardner

Fair Housing's Third Act: American Tragedy or Triumph?
Heather R. Abraham, Fair Housing's Third Act: American Tragedy or Triumph?, 39 Yale L. & Pol'y Rev. 1 (2021)., University at Buffalo School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2020-007
Heather R. Abraham

Illiberalism and Authoritarianism in the American States
University at Buffalo School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2020-001, 70 Am. U. L. Rev. 639 (2021)
James A. Gardner

Academic Law Library Director Status Since the Great Recession: Strengthened, Maintained, or Degraded?
Law Library Journal, Vol. 112, p. 117, 2020, University at Buffalo School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2019-018, U. of Pittsburgh Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2020-20
Elizabeth G. Adelman, Karen L. Shephard, Richard J. Patti and Robert M. Adelman

End.