Dear Colleagues –
In deepest sadness, I'm writing to share the news that our cherished colleague Lauren Edelman passed away earlier this week. Laurie fell ill in late December, but had been slowly recovering until a few days before her death.
Laurie held a Ph.D. in sociology from Stanford and a J.D. from Berkeley. She spent the first part of her career on the Sociology faculty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, before joining the Berkeley Law faculty in 1996 to become the Agnes Roddy Robb Professor of Law and Sociology. During her 25 years at Berkeley, she played many leadership roles, including serving as Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Society from 2004 to 2009 and as Chair of the Jurisprudence and Social Policy program from 2010 to 2013.
As many of you know, Laurie was a path-breaking figure in the study of law and organizations, with a particular focus on equal employment opportunity and workplace discrimination. Her conceptualizations of "legal endogeneity," "managerialization," and the "professional construction of law," have become essential tools for understanding institutionalized bias and for studying both the promise and the peril of reform legislation. Her recent book, Working Law, won both the 2017 George R. Terry Book Award from the Academy of Management and the 2018 Distinguished Scholarly Book Award from the American Sociological Association, and in 2018 she also won the Law and Society Association's highest research honor, the Harry J. Kalven Prize for "a body of…empirical scholarship that has contributed most effectively to the advancement of research in law and society."
Laurie was also a kind and generous mentor, a tireless institution-builder, and a model of inclusive collegiality. She co-founded and chaired the ASA section on Sociology of Law, and over the course of her career she held virtually every office imaginable in the Law and Society Association, including Trustee, Secretary, and President. She was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and held fellowships from the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, the Rockefeller Foundation Center in Bellagio, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Her greatest passion and pride, though, was supporting generations of emerging scholars – a legacy honored in 2017 by the LSA's Stanton Wheeler Mentorship Award.
These accomplishments notwithstanding, Laurie's character, humanity, and love of life is perhaps best captured by the following passage from a memorial message by her student Laura Beth Nielsen (who is now, herself, President of the LSA): "Laurie loved dogs, made her own beautiful jewelry, and famously asked a certain college football coach, 'what is a quarterback?' when he called to tell her she just 'had' to change a student's grade. Her quick and infectious laugh will be missed terribly." (You can read Laura Beth's full memorial, along with many other tributes at: https://lawandsociety.site-ym.com/news/news.asp?id=631332.)
With joyful memories but a heavy heart,
Mark
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Mark Suchman
Professor
Brown University
Providence RI
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