Canadian Law and Society Association

Welcome to the website of the Canadian Law & Society Association. The CLSA is a group of scholars from many disciplines who are interested in the place of law in social, political, economic and cultural life. CLSA members bring training in law, history, sociology, political science, criminology, psychology, anthropology, and economics as well as in other related areas of socio-legal inquiry. Among its activities, the CLSA publishes the Canadian Journal of Law & Society, sponsors an annual conference and graduate student workshop, awards prizes for socio-legal scholarship, and generally works to encourage socio-legal inquiry in Canada and internationally.

News The 2010 annual meeting of the CLSA will take place at Concordia, University in Montreal June 2-4, 2010. The deadline for the call for papers is January 29, 2010.The preliminary program will be available here in March. The Canadian Journal of Law & Society is calling for papers on legal pluralism, with a deadline of May 1, 2010. See these notices of interest to CLSA members: Canada Research Chair - Tier 2 - in Human Rights and Equality Law; Canada Research Chair - Tier 2 - in Law and Social Justice; Endowed Chair in Criminology and Criminal Justice; and Call for Papes on Metis in Canada. Read the Spring 2009 edition of the CLA newsletter, The Bulletin. The CLSA, together with the Canadian Association of Law Teachers (CALT), prepared a position paper on legal education and issues raised by the Federation of Law Societies' Discussion Paper on the Accreditation of Canadian Common Law Degrees. The Federation has since released its Final Report and the issue is now in the hands of the provincial law societies (see the recent letter of the CLSA President to the Law Society of Upper Canada). Many CLSA members have been very active in raising concerns about the implications of of this initiative for university based legal education and the board of the CLSA has adopted a set of principles that it proposes should guide any proposals concerning accreditation of university-based legal education. Members are urged to read the Federation Report, discuss it with their colleagues, and raise their concerns with their local law societies.

This site is currently undergoing major renovations. Please stay tuned for updates.