Welcome New Faculty

The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy at the University at Buffalo School of Law is an endowed academic center. The Center’s mission is to advance interdisciplinary research on law, legal institutions, and social policy across all units at the University at Buffalo. We support research projects, conferences, workshops, fellowships, visiting scholars, speakers, research projects, and other promising initiatives through grants to UB faculty.

Our research themes

The Baldy Center fosters and supports scholars whose work bridges disciplines and contributes to the great and growing mosaic of law and society scholarship, including human rights, courts, environmental governance, legal geography, international trade, intellectual property, social inequality, administrative regulation, state and urban government, the legal profession, family, religion, and cultural understandings of law among many other topics.

We fund academic events and faculty research

Events organized by UB faculty and fully or partially funded by The Baldy Center include conferences, workshops, book manuscript workshops, and guest speakers on any topic related to law, legal institutions, or social policy. We support faculty research in the broad, interdisciplinary arena of law, legal institutions, and social policy, as stand-alone or collaborative projects, including pilot study research aimed at developing external funding proposals. Learn more about our grants to UB faculty.

We produce multimedia to share research by UB faculty and fellows

The Baldy Center Magazine

The Baldy Center fellows and grant recipients are engaged in diverse, interdisciplinary research projects. We share highlights about their work in our semi-annual virtual magazine. We invite you to learn about their cutting-edge work and the work of new graduate student scholars in law and social policy by reading the articles presented in our magazines.

Spring 2022 Magazine
10/18/22
The Baldy Center magazine highlights recent University at Buffalo research focusing on law and social policy themes. Global research has flourished this semester with the return of faculty and students to campus, and pandemic-delayed research programs reactivated with immense productivity here in The Baldy Center.

The research highlighted in the Spring 2022 issue is global in scope, spanning four continents and diverse disciplinary arenas. In this issue, we present work that examines complexities in societal engagements with law, from the perspective of those developing and enforcing law and those responding to it.
Fall 2021 Magazine
10/4/22
Welcome to the Fall 2021 edition of The Baldy Center Magazine. As we begin the third academic year impacted by the pandemic, we in The Baldy Center are witnessing extraordinary resilience from the scholars linked to our center, who continue to advance their research focusing on critical problems in law and society.
Spring 2021 Magazine
11/6/21
Welcome to the Spring 2021 edition of The Baldy Center Magazine. The past academic year has been a challenging time for all of us, as we’ve adapted to virtual research, online engagement, and socially distanced lives.
Fall 2020 Magazine
9/28/21
Welcome to the Fall 2020 edition of The Baldy Center Magazine, our inaugural issue. The Baldy Center, along with many others around the world, shifted to remote work in March 2020. The months since have offered challenges to us all, as we adapt to virtual research, online engagement, and socially distanced lives. The Baldy Center's past and present fellows and grant recipients have demonstrated their resilience throughout, adapting and advancing their important research in these changing and unusual times. We invite you to learn about their cutting-edge work at the intersection of law, legal institutions, and social policy in our virtual magazine.

The Baldy Center Blog

The Baldy Center Blog features interdisciplinary perspectives on research and current events from UB scholars whose work intersects with law, legal institutions, and social policy. We invite you to read The Baldy Center Blog.

Blog examples

Post 28. Barbara Wejnert: Russian invasion of Ukraine is intricately linked to the struggle for democracy against autocracy
7/19/22
“Attacks on health care are part of Russian strategy, with Ukrainian civilians used as "chess pieces," explains World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on March 30, 2022. Continue reading.
Post 25. Joe Atkinson: Decision Support for Lake Ontario Water Quality Management
7/18/22
Current efforts are being conducted to develop models that can adequately simulate the nearshore regions of the lake, which typically exhibit algae-related problems, along with the deeper water environment, where the concern is primarily for fish. These models are continually evolving. Continue reading.
Nadine Shaanta Murshid, Unprecedented Times
8/30/21
In my work, I focus on violence which is explicitly and implicitly embedded in patriarchy, racism, and capitalism. I hold institutions accountable as I analyze policies and procedures that produce the social problems that we see around us. Here are four thoughts I’d like to share. Read the blog.
James Gardner reflects on the question "Is Democracy Possible Here?”
8/30/21
It has often been said of socialism that we don’t really know whether it works because it has never been tried, and because regimes that have called themselves socialist have in fact fallen far short of its ideals. Much the same might be said of democracy. Read the blog.

The Baldy Center Podcast

The Baldy Center Podcast highlights UB faculty research and perspectives on current issues and events. We focus on recent work by UB's interdisciplinary scholars of law, legal institutions, and social policy. Learn more about The Baldy Center Podcast.

Podcast examples:

Episode 29: Anya Bernstein discusses judicial populism and the cultures of bureaucracy
5/5/22
Episode 29 of The Baldy Center Podcast features Anya Bernstein discussing judicial populism, the bureaucratic role of law clerks, and the dangers of exclusionary worldviews in law and society.
Episode 15: Athena Mutua discusses the origins and goals of ClassCrits
5/5/21
Episode 15 features Athena Mutua, Professor and Law and Floyd H. & Hilda L. Hurst Faculty Scholar in the University at Buffalo School of Law. Professor Mutua discusses the origins and goals of ClassCrits, which focuses on the heterodox, or political economy approach in law. She presents the new online journal, The Journal of Law and Political Economy and discusses ways in which ClassCrits engages with ongoing and on the ground activist work in significant social issues.
Episode 19: Helen Drew and Marissa Egloff discuss diversity, equity, and inclusion in major sports leagues
9/24/21
Episode 19 features Helen Drew, Professor of Law, and Marissa Egloff, a third year JD candidate, in the University at Buffalo School of Law, discussing their research examining the number of women and minorities in executive or coaching positions in professional sports.
Episode 10: Waverly Duck and Anne Rawls discuss their new book, Tacit Racism.
2/10/21
Episode 10 features co-authors Waverly Duck, Distinguished Visiting Scholar, 2020-21, Center for Diversity Innovation, University at Buffalo, and Anne Rawls, Professor of Sociology at Bentley University. They discuss their new book, Tacit Racism (University of Chicago Press, 2020). Their research focuses on understanding how centuries of institutional racism have shaped interactions between white people and Black Americans into patterns of implicit bias and tacit racism.

We support research by UB faculty and visiting scholars

We welcome grant proposals and applications from new UB faculty as well as scholars outside UB who plan to engage in collaboration with UB faculty.

Fellows in Interdisciplinary Legal Studies
9/20/21
Fellows contribute greatly to the vitality of The Baldy Center community.
Conferences and Workshops
3/1/23
The Baldy Center sponsors conferences and workshops at the University at Buffalo that bring together international, national, and local interdisciplinary scholars to address critical questions in law and social policy.
Grant Applications
3/27/23
The Baldy Center fosters and supports scholars and UB faculty whose work bridges disciplines and contributes to the great and growing mosaic of law and society scholarship. Topics include human rights, courts, environmental governance, legal geography, international trade, intellectual property, social inequality, administrative regulation, state and urban government, the legal profession, family, religion, and cultural understandings of law.

The Baldy Center Supports Faculty Research