The Center for Law, Justice & Culture is an interdisciplinary academic community dedicated to advancing scholarship and teaching by integrating programs and uniting faculty and students who share a common interest in law’s constitutive and formative role in cultural, political, and social life.

What's New

Dr. Michael McCann spoke as the 2011 Constitution Day Speaker Read about the center in Ohio University Outlook! * * * * * * * Faculty Achievements

Professor Duschinski wins Grasselli Brown Teaching Award

Professor Jungkunz wins University Professor Award

Professor Vander Ven named Wagner Professor for Undergraduate Teaching Excellence

New Faculty Books

	Susan Burgess The New York Times on Gay and Lesbian Issues
	Ursula Castellano Outsourcing Justice: The Role of Nonprofit Caseworkers in Pretrial Release Programs
	Marina Peterson Space, Sound, & the City: Civic Performance in Downtown Los Angeles
	Tom Vander Ven Getting Wasted: Why Students Drink Too Much & Party So Hard

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Events

2011-12 Events To Be Announced

>> More!

For faculty, the center advances research excellence by fostering collaboration, grant acquisition, mentorship, and professional relationships with national leaders in the field. 

For students, the center provides opportunities to study law and justice from a liberal arts perspective, bringing together interdisciplinary viewpoints from anthropology, criminology, political science, sociology, and other departments across the social sciences and humanities.

Center Highlights

We are very pleased and excited to announce the establishment of the Center for Law, Justice & Culture, recently approved by the Ohio University Board of Trustees. 

In 2009, more than a dozen professors, who span multiple disciplines and academic ranks, collaborated to create an academic center dedicated to advancing teaching and scholarship that explores law’s presence in our social and political lives.  To quote one Center faculty member, “It took only six months to get from inspiration to institution—that pace, in and of itself, conveys the sense of excitement that so many of us here feel about the Center and its mission.”

Our research and teaching interests reflect a fundamental commitment to the study of law and society from a liberal arts perspective.  This approach, which complements the aims of pre-law programs and law schools across the United States, is also distinctive in that it deploys all the tools of the social sciences and the humanities in an interdisciplinary mission to fully understand the nature of law and its unprecedented roles in contemporary societies.  Rather than conceiving of the law as a set of pre-established rules or a technical/vocational pursuit, students and scholars focus upon the complex processes which shape law and the various ways in which societies are organized in relation to law.  We conceive of this kind of study as a transformative engagement that is an integral part of education for self-governance and citizenship in a democratic context. To that end, the Center aims to increase the visibility of faculty teaching and scholarship in law and society, enhance research collaboration, promote external funding initiatives, and combine multi-disciplinary teaching strengths in a way that delivers outstanding opportunities for high-achieving students.

We look forward to providing faculty and students who share a common interest in the study of law the formal opportunity to organize and further build already strong integrative programs.