Cecelia Klingele was a panelist for plenary session, "Mass Incarceration, Criminal Sentencing, and the Politics of Crime and Punishment" at the American Association of Law Schools Conference on Criminal Justice, held in San Diego in June. She spoke about the role of community supervision in reducing mass incarceration.
Gretchen Viney's article "101: Writing a Professional Letter" appears in the June issue of Wisconsin Lawyer.
Keith Findley presented "At the Intersection of Law and Science: Shaken Baby Syndrome" at the 4th Annual Prescription for Criminal Justice Forensics conference, hosted by Fordham Law School in New York City. Findley's presentation was part of the panel, "Cutting Edge Research in Forensic Science."
Faculty Activities and Scholarship
Wisconsin faculty members share a commitment to excellence in research, embracing a wide variety of substantive concerns and methodological approaches. The faculty has long been known for its interest in interdisciplinary work and for its commitment to a law-in-action approach to scholarship.
For Wisconsin scholars, no matter how interesting or elegant the underlying theory, Wisconsin's law-in-action approach challenges them to answer the question: "Why should this matter to people in the real world?" In contrast to legal scholars whose work is theory-based, Wisconsin scholars tend to begin with an observed, real-world problem or phenomenon and then seek to explain it and to put it into a larger theoretical context.
Much of the research undertaken at Wisconsin is devoted to explaining how law and legal institutions work and often to understanding why law and legal institutions might not be working as intended. The Wisconsin faculty contextualizes law, studying it as one of many social processes that may shape behavior. Many faculty members are active in the Law & Society Association, an international organization of scholars who study the interrelation of society and the legal process; indeed, the current Wisconsin faculty includes three LSA past presidents.
The work of the Wisconsin faculty is not geographically bounded. Though a majority study U.S. law, a growing number explore law in less familiar settings and are focusing their research on the workings of law in countries throughout the world.
