From the Editor

Abstract

At one time the Law and Society Association might have been loosely defined as “a group of people who subscribe to the Law & Society Review” Today the Review is properly described as the journal of the Association, for the Association has developed into a true fellowship of scholars, and publishing the Review is only one of the Association's activities. For more than a decade the Association was governed by a Board of Trustees that chose its own leaders and successors. Today the trustees and the president are elected by the membership at large. Early trustees meetings were often “piggybacked” onto meetings of the AALS or APSA—meetings that a substantial proportion of trustees were likely to attend in any event—and it was a triumph of intellectual interchange if some other social science association could be persuaded to add to its annual meeting a panel or two devoted to “Law and . …” Today the Association's trustees and president are elected by its members, and the Association holds well-attended annual meetings filled with more interesting research panels than any one person can accommodate. In addition, the Association supports an active executive office that regularly publishes a newsletter and participates with other social science associations in explaining the business of social science to the public and in seeking the support needed for the important work we do. All of this reflects the fact that for an increasing number of scholars the Law and Society Association has become a primary rather than secondary discipline affiliation.