Center for the Study of Law and Society

A Tribute to Professor Lauren Edelman by CSLS Faculty Director, KT Albiston

I write with a heavy heart to report the untimely death of our dear colleague and friend Laurie Edelman. An exceptional scholar, she developed the field of law and organizations through her pathbreaking and award-winning scholarship about civil rights laws and work organizations. Empirically sophisticated and theoretically rich, her work helped explain why civil rights laws failed to bring about promised change. More than an internationally recognized scholar, Laurie was also an extraordinarily generous mentor, colleague, and friend. She served the field in so many ways, from helping to found the ASA Sociology of Law Section, serving as President of the Law & Society Association and on numerous LSA committees, serving on the National Science Foundation Law and Social Science Program Panel, on the Board of the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, and on the Board of the American Bar Foundation, and on the editorial boards of the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Sociology, and Contemporary Sociology, among others. She also was a generous mentor to junior scholars and graduate students across the country, taking time from her own work to counsel young scholars on research design and funding, grant applications, the tenure process, and publishing. She founded mentoring programs for junior faculty both in the ASA Sociology of Law Section and the Law & Society Association, and she was especially enthusiastic in promoting the careers of young scholars of color. Every time I talked to her, she was offering comments on someone’s paper or grant proposal or serving on a national committee or writing a tenure letter or peer review. In recent years, she led the Legal Studies honors program, mentoring young scholars in their undergraduate careers. It is hard to comprehend such a devastating loss for Berkeley Law, JSP, CSLS, LSA and the broader law and society community. We are grateful for the time we had with her, and we will always remember her generosity, kindness, and brilliance. The memorial service for Laurie Edelman will be held on Tuesday, April 4, at 4:00 p.m. in the Warren Room at Berkeley Law. The service will be streaming live on youtube as well. You can find the link here.