What Does the American Bar Endowment Do?
Each year Endowment grants support a wide variety of public service, research and educational programs within the legal profession, through the activities of the ABA Fund for Justice and Education and the American Bar Foundation.
The Endowment's funding of the ABA Fund for Justice and Education provides substantial support for the public service activities of the Young Lawyers Division. Each year, the Endowment sponsors a special award for Outstanding Public Service in recognition of an exceptional, unique, and exemplary project of an affiliated young lawyer bar group.
During its more than 60-year history the Endowment and its members have provided over $245 million in support of its charter purposes to advance legal study and research and to promote the administration of justice and uniformity of judicial decision throughout the United States.
I Contribute My Dividends Every Year... How is the Money Used?
Each year the ABE makes grants to support hundreds of research, public service and educational projects in the field of law through the activities of the ABA's Fund for Justice and Education and the American Bar Foundation.
The Endowment's unique role in the ABA family is to "Fund the Future" of the legal profession through continued financial support to the FJE and ABF. (See the links below for further details on some specific programs ABE grants have supported.)
In order to "Fund the Future" we need your help and support. Member participation in our insurance plans is the lifeblood of the Endowment. Without your support and the dividend contributions made by participating members, we would not be able to continue our nearly 50-year tradition of grants to the American Bar Foundation and the ABA's Fund for Justice and Education.
ABA Fund for Justice and Education
For the 2011-2012 fiscal year, the American Bar Endowment will be donating over three million dollars to help the ABA Fund for Justice and Education (FJE) fulfill its mission of advancing the public service and educational programs of the American Bar Association. For nearly 50 yeas, the FJE has strengthened the ABA’s ability to protect the elderly, represent the impoverished, advocate on behalf of youth in crisis, and defend our human rights – here and abroad.
Every year, the FJE supports over 200 ABA public service and educational programs that help the ABA and is members improve our justice system and address the growing legal needs of our communities. These programs are divided among five main areas of concentration:
| (1) Access to Justice | (2) Children & Family Rights | (3) Public Education |
| (4) Professionalism and the Legal Profession | (5) International Justice |
Below are a few examples of each of these five main programmatic areas.
Access to Justice
Commission on Homelessness and Poverty
Council on Racial and Ethnic Justice
Death Penalty Representation Project
Children & Family Rights
Center on Children and the Law
Commission on Domestic Violence
Commission on Law & Aging
Public Education
Division for Public Education
Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities
Young Lawyers Division Public Service Project
Professionalism and the Legal Profession
Center for Professional Responsibility
Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession
Commission on Women in the Profession
International Justice
Center for Human Rights
Rule of Law Initiative
Section of International Law
For more information on all these projects or for further information on the ABA Fund for Justice and Education, please call 1-312-988-5927.
American Bar Foundation
For the 2011-2012 fiscal year, the American Bar Endowment will be donating over three million dollars to help the ABF fulfill its mission as a non-profit, independent national research institute committed to basic empirical research on law and legal institutions. For more than 50 years, the Foundation's research products have served to expand knowledge of the theory and functioning of law, legal institutions, and the legal profession.
Foundation researchers use a wide array of research methods, such as sample surveys, observational studies, documentary analysis, structured interviews, statistical analysis of major data sets, experiments, and historical and comparative analysis.
Listed below are some of the projects of the ABF which the ABE currently is helping to fund:
LEGAL PROFESSION
Access to Justice investigates Americans’ experiences with their civil justice problems and the institutions that exist to serve them. The goal is to produce new knowledge essential for policy makers and service providers as they seek to respond to the legal needs of the public today. Rebecca Sandefur,* Robert L. Nelson,* Laura Beth Nielsen*
After the JD: A Longitudinal Study of Lawyers' Careers is tracking, for twelve years, a national sample of lawyers who passed the bar in 2000 to illuminate the factors shaping career trajectories. Ronit Dinovitzer, Bryant Garth, Robert L. Nelson,* and Joyce Sterling
Cause Lawyering in Context: The Constraints and Opportunities of Practicing Public Law in Public Interest Law Firms will provide an unprecedented, empirical portrait of the public interest bar. Laura Beth Nielsen,* Catherine Albiston
Civil Rights and Corporate Wrongs: Black Corporate Lawyers and the Transformation of the Elite Black Bar is addressing two interconnected questions: do black corporate lawyers experience moral conflict about their work, and if so, how do they deal with that conflict?; and to what degree does race continue to structure the career opportunities of black professionals? David Wilkins, ABF Affiliated Scholar
Early Post-Law School Careers of Women and Men Lawyers in U.S. and German Cities studies the early post-law school careers of lawyers practicing in the business and political capitals of the United States and Germany John Hagan,* Gabriele Plickert
Lawyers in the Pursuit of Political Liberalism: Criminal Defense in China investigates whether criminal defense lawyers are leading the drive for political liberalism in China and, if so, how. Terence Halliday,* Sida Liu
LAW AND GLOBALIZATION
The Center on Law and Globalization is a joint effort by the ABF and the University of Illinois College of Law. The Center concentrates the diverse research programs on globalization and law at the ABF and the University of Illinois into a more integrated and mutually engaging program of activities. It will function as a springboard to stimulate more research and as a nexus for scholarly exchanges and cooperation. John Hagan* Terence Halliday*
Conceptualizing, Contextualizing, and Testing the Effects of the Rule of Law seeks to identify the conditional mechanisms under which the rule of law produces its desired results. Using the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index and through specific case studies, this study will seek to help explain how the rule of law actually works, Tom Ginsburg* Robert L. Nelson*
Crime, War and Wealth in Pre- and Post-Invasion Iraq seeks to develop an evidentiary foundation in the form of social science research findings that can contribute to holding parties legally accountable for human rights violations in pre- and post-invasion Iraq. John Hagan*
Global Norm-Making: UNCITRAL, International Organizations and Corporate Insolvency Regimes is a multi-faceted study of global norms on insolvency and is an extension of the recently completed ABF study on the emergence of an international legal field of insolvency law from the late 1970s through 2005. Susan Block-Lieb and Terence Halliday*
The "Legalization" of Medicine in AIDS Treatment and Research is examining the way in which treatment regimes, in the United States, Africa, and Thailand, have come to be constructed and diffused as a kind of law. Carol Heimer*
CIVIL JUSTICE
The Civil Jury at Work is using an unprecedented data set of 50 videotaped jury trials along with juror deliberations to evaluate an Arizona reform that allowed jurors to talk about the case among themselves as the trial proceeded and to assess the role of experts, such as engineers or nurses, who serve on the jury. Shari Diamond,* Neil Vidmar, and Mary Rose
The Social Psychological Role of Subjective Harm in Punishment Judgments is examining the effect of victim impact testimony on sentencing decisions by jurors. Janice Nadler,* Mary Rose
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Consequences of Lawbreaking in Young People's Lives: Delinquency and Depression in the Transition to Adult Disadvantage is using data on a large national sample of adolescent youth to test a model that considers the causal relationship between delinquency and depression and their linkages to early problems in adulthood. John Hagan*
Home Foreclosures and Criminal Violence will estimate the effect of home foreclosures on violent crime in Chicago. Results from this analysis will provide lessons about the mechanisms through which home foreclosures may destabilize neighborhoods through social disorder, and ultimately criminal violence. John Hagan,* Andrea Cann Chandrasekher
Imprisonment and Neighborhood Political Participation focuses primarily on the short-term effects of incarceration for neighborhood political participation. The study will draw upon existing data from Departments of Correction, Boards of Elections, the U.S. Census Bureau and extensive new and unique fieldwork currently underway. Traci Burch*
SOCIAL JUSTICE
Understanding the Contribution of Legislation, Social Activism, Markets, and Choice to the Economic Progress of African Americans explores the relationship between legal policies and other factors that determine the wages of African Americans, both historically and currently. James Heckman*
The Foundation and Application of Disparate Impact Doctrine is examining the legal theory of disparate impact and is questioning empirically whether the concept should be applied to fields such as organ transplantation. James Heckman*
The Changing Dynamics of Employment Discrimination Litigation, a large-scale study of federal employment discrimination litigation during the period of 1988 to 2003, will add important new understandings of employment civil rights litigation. Laura Beth Nielsen,* Robert L. Nelson*
REGULATION
Surrogate Decisionmaking at the End of Life is investigating how fiduciaries, who make medical, custodial, financial, and other decisions for those no longer able to do so themselves, exercise their responsibilities. Susan Shapiro*
LEGAL HISTORY
Local Courts & African American Life, 1865-1930 (Formerly: Law and Everyday Life among African Americans, 1865-1930) investigates the activities and experiences of African Americans in local civil courts from the Civil War through the Great Migration. It attempts to recover this virtually-unexplored dimension of legal history, and use it to re-think key issues in African American social and cultural history. Dylan C. Penningroth*
Suing Henry Ford: Law and Anti-Semitism in the 1920s uses a famous libel case involving automaker Henry Ford to explore the history of American anti-Semitism and its relationship to group libel law. Victoria Woeste*
*ABF RESEARCH FACULTY
For more information on all these projects or for further information on American Bar Foundation, please visit their website at www.abfn.org or call 1-312-988-6500.