Panel discussion: Every Day is Sunday - Exploring Public Sector Policy Investment Choices in Pro Sports Facilities. On November 14, 2025, panelists Nellie Drew, Ken Belson, and Richard Tobe discussed the legal, political and business practices and policies that have driven massive public sector investment into facilities for privately owned professional sports teams.

May 30 and 31, 2025 CLC workshop: Reclaiming Constitutional Law: Limiting Executive Power Overreach, Expanding Shields. This is the second of a three-part series on Teaching Constitutional Law in a Time of Retrenchment. The series goal is to explore and develop materials and insights for teaching constitutional law, including web-based materials, art, music and projects.

April 16, 2026: The Alison L. Des Forges Memorial Committee presents its annual symposium, Peace and Justice in the Taiwan Strait. This symposium will explore the complex cultural, historical and political interactions among the Republic of China, People’s Republic of China and the United States with a view to maintaining de facto peace and defending human rights on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. The international symposia, 2013 to present, honors the life and work of human rights activist Alison Des Forges (1942-2009). Visit ADFMC event page.

Conference: The Human Right to Truth and Truth Commissions (Summer 2025)  The event examines how the emergence of the victim's right to the truth marks a revolution in the relationship between law and historical understanding. Per the traditional conception, the legal truth was to be determined in judicial procedures governed by rigid rules, whose main goal was to safeguard the rights of the accused. An alternative conception emerged with the Nunca Mas (Never Again) Report from September 1984 drafted by the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (Spanish: Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas, CONADEP) - the first successful truth commission in history.

MAY 23, 2025: Scholarly communications work is an emerging area in law school libraries in the United States. The conference, Mapping Scholarly Communications in Law Libraries, will present a keynote about the first major survey describing the extent of scholarly communications work being performed in academic law libraries in the United States. The program will consist of presentations of papers written by members of the study team and other scholars.

Symposium April 3, 2025: The Alison L. Des Forges Memorial Committee presents its annual symposium, Israel and Palestine: Human Rights and Configurations for the Future. This symposium addresses the human rights implications raised by the current conflict between Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah. It will examine the limitations of the international system that has sustained the conflict. We ask what alternative configurations can be imagined to secure political and human rights for both Israelis and Palestinians? This symposium, honors the life and work of human rights activist Alison Des Forges (1942-2009). See ADFMC event page.

To mark the 70th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education (BOE) in 2024, The Baldy Center sponsored a community forum organized by LaGarret King The event opened with Jillian Hanesworth, Buffalo poet-laureate, performing a spoken-word poem commissioned for the occasion. The panel discussion, moderated by Anthony White, consisted of Kathleen “Kathy” Franklin Adams, Nanette Massey, Donette Ruffin and Mario Workman. Marcus Watson provided a forum summary with closing remarks.

May 17 and 18, 2024: The workshop, Transnational Legal and Political Theory, gathers leading legal scholars for an intensive discussion on original work about theoretical, doctrinal, and political issues created by putative forms of legal phenomena beyond the state, such as indigenous and customary law, international law, international and regional human rights law, the European Union, transnational legal orders, and global legal phenomena. Papers will be published in a special issue of the Buffalo Law Review. 

RESEARCH NEWS:   Jacobs School to host international conference of Alcohol and Drugs History Society. Read the article by Bert Gambini, here.

On April 19, 2024, the workshop, Resilience Before The Disaster Arrives: Deploying Inter-University Multisectoral Convergent Collaboration Toward a New Disaster Preparation and Response Ethic, will bring together academic and community-based experts with emerging scholars and storytellers, including a core who have been collaborating since before Hurricane Maria. 

NOVEMBER 10 to 12, 2023: The Baldy Center is pleased to co-sponsor the Critical (Legal) Collective's Inaugural Convening, “Organizing for Democracy and Liberation: The Right to Learn, The Right to Teach, The Right to Thrive”.  Hosted by Duke Law School's Center on Law, Race & Policy, conference organizers include Athena D. Mutua, Professor, UB School of Law, a founding member of the Critical (Legal) Collective.

OCTOBER 20 & 21, 2023: Reproductive Justice Conference Post-Dobbs: It's Not Just Abortion, co-sponsored by: The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy;  the UB School of Law; the UB Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences; and, the WNY Coalition for Reproductive Justice. Facilitator: Lucinda Finley (UB School of Law). VISIT CONFERENCE WEBSITE.

September 29, 30, and October 1, 2023: The Baldy Center sponsors the Third International Conference on Buddhism and Law. The conference, hosted by the journal, Buddhism, Law & Society, focuses on the many features of Buddhism, and how law and the state relate to Buddhist actors, institutions, and texts.

May 26 and 27,  2023: The Baldy Center conference, Critical Encounters with Habermas' Legal Theory in Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy is dedicated to re-examining the principal work on legal theory by the eminent German philosopher, Jürgen Habermas.

April 28, 2023: The Baldy Center presents a conference discussing the book by John Henry Schlegel, While Waiting for Rain: Community, Law and Economy in a Time of Change. The book is about the economic history of the United States as well as that of Buffalo, New York: an appropriate stand-in for any city that may have seen its economy start to fall apart in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. 

2022-23 Conference Events: Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) is the theme of the year-long conference hosted by the UB Gender Institute as a series of lectures, panel table discussions, and reading groups. The events will highlight the most recent feminist contributions and SRT developments as core concerns of political economy and social policy.

April 26, 2023: The Baldy Center is pleased to co-sponsor the 2023 Alison Des Forges Annual Symposium, “The Russo-Ukrainian War: Achievements and Limitations of Today’s International System". This symposium will examine the Russo-Ukrainian war and what it tells us about the strengths and weaknesses of the contemporary international system. It will explore war crimes, crimes against humanity and alleged genocide arising from the conflict. It will also revisit the enduring dichotomy between Russian authoritarian imperialism and Ukrainian democratic nationalism. 

OCTOBER 28 and 29, 2022, join us for the conference, The State of Democracy and Rise of Autocracy in view of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine. The event includes presentations on democracy, authoritarianism, law, and illiberalism. Participants aim to illuminate environmental policies and political problems of weakening democratic sustainability with the simultaneous growth of autocracies worldwide. 

OCTOBER 28 and 29, 2022, join us for the workshop, "Visionaries and Troublemakers: Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at 50".  The event has the dual aim of critically reflecting on fifty years of women's studies at UB and examining how the teaching and research conducted by faculty and students has been part of broader struggles to promote the rights of women and sexual minorities.

LPE Workshop, June 9 & 10, 2022:  Exploring The Law and Political Economy Difference. The multiple crises of the 21st century — covid, climate, financial instability, inequality, and rising authoritarianism – have spurred a new intellectual movement, Law and Political Economy (LPE).

April 29 and 30:  The University at Buffalo is proud to present the 2022 Rustgi Undergraduate Conference on South Asia by reflecting upon the rich history of South Asia and its connection to present-day conditions.

Friday, March 6, 2020:  The symposium, Legacies of Suffrage: Women's Activism Then and Now, marks the ratification centennial of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Organized by Carrie Bramen, the symposium brings together scholars to explore the lessons of hard-won voting rights, the need for civic engagement, and, the role of trailblazers in the suffrage movement.

April 22 and 23, 2022: Join us online for the conference, Looking Back, Moving Forward: Law, Policy and Environmental Justice. The two-day virtual event critically examines the past, present, and potential future roles of the law and legal strategies to advance environmental justice (EJ) policy and action.

June 25, 2021, Marx, Law, and the Administrative State, workshop organized by Matthew Dimick.  The online event is sponsored, in part, by: The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy; the University at Buffalo School of Law; and Legal Form.

April 14, 15 & 16, 2021: While medical humanities have tended to focus almost exclusively on humans, a medical posthumanities, by contrast, would take seriously the role of "more-than-human" actors to explore the complex entanglements of human, animal, and ecological health.

The Del Cotto Professorship, The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy, and the Buffalo Law Review are pleased to announce publication of the symposium issue Serious Fun: A conference with & around Schlegel!  Essays focus on legal and economic history, legal scholarship, and teaching. Serious Fun is being planned. The 2021 symposium issue is here.

September 26 to 28, 2019: The Second International Conference on Buddhism and Law. Hosted by the journal Buddhism, Law & Society, this conference focuses on the many legal features of Buddhism, and how law and the state relate to Buddhist actors, institutions and texts.

The Baldy Center Workshop, October 11 & 12, 2019, marks the launch of  The Journal of Law and Political Economy  (JLPE).  The peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary online publication seeks to promote multi- and interdisciplinary analyses of the mutually constitutive interactions among law, society, institutions, and politics. Its central goal is to explore power in all its manifestations (race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, global inequality, etc.) and the relationship of law to power.

Workshop: Environmental Justice in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank. Fifty years into the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, it is important to understand the lesser known aspects of this apparatus. The focus of the workshop is on the administration of environmental injustice in the occupied Palestinian West Bank. Dates: February 7 and 8, 2019. 

On November 10, 2018, we hosted "Tempering Power", The Baldy Center's 40th Anniversary Conference held in conjunction with the Mitchell Lecture. On November 9, the Mitchell Lecture was delivered by John Braithwaite, the prolific and highly distinguished professor at Australian National University. His working title is “Tempered Power, Variegated Capitalism, Law and Society”.  The talk was complemented by the Baldy Center's day-long conference.

On September 21 and 22, 2018, we hosted the symposium, Addiction as a chronic illness? Promises and perils of a new drug policy paradigm. Activists and physicians have worked hard to end punitive responses to addiction and recast it as a chronic illness treatable, in part, with medications like buprenorphine. But the “chronic illness” paradigm raises new questions: How to avoid the stigma and social limitations associated with chronic illness? How to prevent pharmaceutical industry influence over medication assisted treatment (MAT)? This symposium brings together leading scholars of addiction, pharmaceuticals, and chronic illness to explore the promises and perils of applying this paradigm to drug dependence and addiction.

This invited workshop will focus on the internal and external facilitators and barriers of the transactional, developmental, and hybrid roles of the research university, in an effort to address the absence of systematic quantifiable measures of university-based research that address broader developmental aspects. Participants in this workshop will share their current work on this topic as well as plan for future collaboration.
Dates: April 7 and 8, 2018

For most people familiar with the process of seeking accommodations through institutional channels, we know that there is often a disconnect between following the letter of the law and maximizing the learning experience for everyone involved. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 requires us to provide reasonable accommodations for students and workers with disabilities. When is it not enough? What can universities do better? This discussion will bring together scholars, students, and advocates to discuss the particulars of succeeding as a student, teacher, and researcher while disabled. Date: April 11, 2018

November 11 & 12, 2021: Global Glyphosate: New Challenges in Regulating Pervasive Chemicals in the Anthropocene. 

Join us on Saturday, September 23, 2017, for Buffaronto Sociolegal Conversations. The event will bring together scholars from Buffalo and Toronto for informal, wide-ranging discussion of pressing issues in sociolegal research. We invite you to participate in this conversation, which we hope will be the first of an ongoing series.

Fall 2017: The Trump and the Law speaker series seeks to create a space for discussion, inquiry, and action as we enter new and ever more turbulent legal and political waters. To that end, we are hosting a series of speakers who will engage in public discussions of the policies and politics of the current administration. The talks are organized around particular policy or legal issues and bring to campus distinguished scholars, lawyers, and others engaged with the issues of the day. 

Join us, March 10 and 11, 2017, for a conference that explores the legal challenges for climate change advocacy, alternative policy approaches, and the stumbling blocks for existing and proposed legal theories.

February 23 and 24, 2017, join us for a two-day workshop that examines the limits of legal frameworks rooted in humanistic and terrestrial assumptions. The event brings together legal scholars, geographers, anthropologists, sociologists, environmental scholars, and historians to expose the biopolitical hierarchies naturalized through modes of classification and operation by exploring a new subject of inquiry: ocean legalities.

Conference: “From Protest to Politics: Women’s Movements and Strengthening Democracies.” For the last sixty years, there has been a consistent pattern of the growth of democratic governments produced by engaged citizens working together in social movements. Often led by diverse women, these social movements won the expansion of civil rights, political participation, and new laws to ensure equality. However, we now face a global rise in authoritarian politics and a rising concern over the future of liberal democracies. Our conference brings together scholars to analyze the current moment. Dates: April 11 & 12, 2019.

Join us on Saturday, November 5, 2016, for Global Governance and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Symposium. The goal of this one-day symposium is to critically evaluate the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Billed as a “21st century trade agreement,” this far-reaching accord seeks to harmonize and, in some instances, to deepen the transnational governance of labor, the environment, and intellectual property, among other areas.

October 21 and 22, 2016, join us for a groundbreaking workshop that will bring together scholars from a diverse range of disciplines to contemplate the cultural, scientific, regulatory, and normative implications of gene editing technologies for the future of life.

Building on the edited collection, Buddhism and Law: An Introduction (Cambridge, 2014) by Rebecca French and Mark Nathan, the two-day conference will also serve as the official launch of the first issue of the new peer-reviewed, academic journal, Buddhism, Law & Society  (William S. Hein Publishing).

Spring 2016 workshop: Redistribution: Politics, Law, and Policy. The theme of this gathering is the redistribution of income, with particular focus on questions that concern preferences, taxation, and state capacity.