IRVINE, Calif. (June 11, 2024) — University of California, Irvine Professors of Law Kaaryn Gustafson and Ari Ezra Waldman, and Assistant Professor of Sociology Kelley Fong, were recognized at the Law and Society Association’s 2024 Annual Awards on June 6, 2024, in Denver, Colorado.
The Law and Society Association (LSA), which celebrated its 60th anniversary this year, honors leading international scholars each summer for their groundbreaking publications and contributions to the study of law and society. UC Irvine was the only university to have this many faculty honored at this year’s ceremony, underscoring the university’s interdisciplinary excellence and deep commitment to socio-legal scholarship and service.
Prof. Gustafson won the Ronald Pipkin Service Award for her exemplary leadership and service in the law and society community. Prof. Waldman co-won the Law and Society Association Article Prize for his article, “Gender Data in the Automated Administrative State,” 124 Columbia Law Review 1229 (2024). Prof. Fong co-won the Herbert Jacob Book Prize for her book, “Investigating Families: Motherhood in the Shadow of Child Protective Services” (Princeton University Press 2023).
Professor Kaaryn Gustafson, Recipient of the Ronald Pipkin Service Award
The Ronald Pipkin Service Award is awarded to a Law and Society Association member who has demonstrated sustained and extraordinary service to LSA. The official award announcement reads, “A distinguished member of the Law and Society Association for nearly three decades, Professor Kaaryn Gustafson’s unwavering commitment to service goes far beyond the call of duty.” In addition to serving as Secretary, multiple terms on the Board of Trustees, and on various prize committees, Prof. Gustafson has served on many committees that have worked to increase the racial, ethnic, and international diversity of the organization; to make the annual meetings more inclusive of scholars with disabilities; and to make the association more welcoming to queer and female-identified members and to scholars early in their careers. The announcement from LSA notes, “Prof. Gustafson’s scholarly achievements related to law, the social sciences, and policy have earned her countless professional accolades, but equally impressive is the depth and quality of her engagement with the law and society community, which is marked by innovation, leadership, and humanity.”
“It is truly an honor to be recognized by LSA, an interdisciplinary association that has been my scholarly home since graduate school, and that has nurtured not only me, but also my students, for many years,” said Professor Gustafson.
“We are proud that our colleague, Kaaryn Gustafson, has been recognized with this well-deserved award,” said UC Irvine School of Law Dean and Chancellor’s Professor of Law Austen Parrish. “This recognition is a testament to her tremendous work as a distinguished member of the Law and Society Association.”
Prof. Gustafson serves as co-director with Prof. Mario Barnes of the Center on Law, Equality and Race at UC Irvine School of Law. An interdisciplinary scholar, Prof. Gustafson focuses on the creeping administrative overlap between the welfare and criminal justice systems, as well as the experiences of those individuals and families caught in those systems. Her current research explores the role of law in crafting categories of racial difference and maintaining persistent racial inequality in the United States. Prof. Gustafson has developed courses as part of UCI Law’s curriculum on race and indigeneity. She is one of five inaugural campus-wide UCI Inclusive Excellence Term Chair Professors.
Last year, Prof. Gustafson was honored by the American Bar Foundation Fellows with a prestigious 2023 Outstanding Scholar Award. Her book “Cheating Welfare: Public Assistance and the Criminalization of Poverty” (NYU Press 2011) was awarded the Law and Society Association’s Herbert Jacob Book Prize (2012). She also received the Association of American Law Schools’ Derrick A. Bell, Jr. Award (2009).
Professor Ari Ezra Waldman, Co-Winner of the Law and Society Association Article Prize
The Law and Society Association Article Prize recognizes exceptional scholarship in socio-legal studies for a journal article or chapter in an edited book. Professor Waldman’s co-winning article, “Gender Data in the Automated Administrative State,” 124 Columbia Law Review 1229 (2024), considers how the systematic erasure of transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming individuals is not merely a consequence of technology, but also a product of law. Prof. Waldman analyzes how legal mandates, forms, and other limitations embedded in the fabric of law shape data. The article ends with principles for reform, offering a path forward.
“I am delighted and deeply honored to receive this award,” said Professor Waldman. “I never thought my work would be recognized alongside the work of the canonical and outstanding scholars that have come before me as winners of the Article Prize.”
“It is a special honor to receive this award for this particular article, a piece about the erasure of transgender and nonbinary populations,” he added. “Queer communities across the globe are under attack and live in extraordinary precarity. We all need to stand up, acknowledge, and fight back. LSA has a long history of honoring scholarship that gives voice to the voiceless. I’m so honored to be part of that tradition.”
“Professor Waldman adds a critical new perspective to socio-legal scholarship through his vital work exploring the relationship between technology, queer civil rights and power,” Dean Parrish added. “It’s wonderful to see the Law and Society Association recognize the power of his work.”
LSA heralded Prof. Waldman’s article as “exceptionally engaged with law and society scholarship and frames, a focus that allows the paper to work well as both an empirical article and a legal argument. The far-reaching implications of the work extend well beyond gender into other automated categorization processes. Prof. Waldman’s scholarly project is striking in its innovation.”
Prof. Waldman is a socio-legal scholar of technology and society at UC Irvine School of Law. His scholarship focuses on privacy, digital governance and queer civil rights. An active member in the law and technology community, Prof. Waldman is the Chair of the Privacy Law Scholars Conference, the premier academic conference in the law and technology field. He is also an elected member of the American Law Institute and holds board leadership positions at the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative and Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). In 2020, he founded @Legally_Queer, a social media project that educates the public about the legal history, present and future of LGBTQ+ freedom.
Assistant Professor Kelley Fong, Co-Winner of the Herbert Jacob Book Prize
The Herbert Jacob Book Prize annual competition is open to books from all fields of, and approaches to, law and society scholarship published in the previous year. Professor Fong’s co-winning book, “Investigating Families: Motherhood in the Shadow of Child Protective Services” (Princeton University Press 2023), unveils how the United States’ reliance on child protective agencies make motherhood precarious for people who are already marginalized.
The official award announcement reads: “Using multi-site ethnography, interviews, and extensive qualitative analyses, Prof. Fong exposes the implications of depending on child protective services as a first-response for families experiencing poverty and adversity. Fong focuses on how mothers experience the fear of child protective services even when contact with the agency never materializes. She emphasizes that, shrouded in the promise of assistance, child protective agencies use scare tactics like surveillance and investigation to maintain power over marginalized mothers. Her work paves the way for new approaches to helping families.”
“I’m so honored to see ‘Investigating Families’ receive this award,” said Professor Fong. “To me, this recognition affirms the centrality of child welfare law and policy to socio-legal scholarship. And I hope that the book draws attention to the experiences of system-impacted families as scholars, advocates, and the public consider how to improve conditions for children.”
“Professor Fong’s compelling book goes behind the scenes of Child Protective Services, demanding policy responses for vulnerable families that don’t threaten mothers or further place families at risk,” said UC Irvine School of Social Sciences Dean Bill Maurer. “I am delighted it is being recognized by the Law and Society Association. It embodies the interdisciplinary, social problems-oriented public scholarship the Association has inspired since its founding.”
Prof. Fong is an assistant professor of sociology at UC Irvine’s School of Social Sciences. She studies social inequality and family life with an emphasis on how social policies and social services affect families, as well as how families experience and engage with these systems. As evidenced by her winning book, Prof. Fong’s current work focuses on Child Protective Services, a system that she notes intervenes far more frequently in U.S. families (particularly low income, Black, and Native American families) than many people realize. She’s also interested in education and education policy and has conducted research on school choice and residential selection. This work examines how families with children decide where to live and where to send their kids to school and how these processes vary based on families’ social contexts.
About the University of California, Irvine’s Leadership in the Socio-Legal Community
The University of California, Irvine has long had a deep connection with the Law and Society Association (LSA). Many of our faculty — at the Law School and across campus — are leading scholars in the LSA. Among the Law School faculty, Prof. Veena Dubal is a current member of the LSA Board of Trustees and Profs. Swethaa Ballakrishnen, Mario Barnes and Kaaryn Gustafson previously served as trustees; Prof. Shauhin Talesh serves as General Editor of the Law and Society Review (LSR) and Profs. Ballakrishnen and Emily Taylor Poppe currently serve on the Editorial Advisory Board of LSR.
LSA has also consistently recognized our faculty’s scholarship and service — Prof. Ballakrishnen is a prior awardee of the Herbert Jacob Book Prize; Prof. Gustafson has won the Herbert Jacob Book Prize and the Stan Wheeler Mentorship Award; Prof. Ari Ezra Waldman has won the LSA Article Prize; and Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus Bryant Garth has won two Herbert Jacob Book Prizes and the Harry J. Kalven Jr. Prize.
UC Irvine also has significant socio-legal programming: UC Irvine’s Center in Law, Society and Culture hosts a regular interdisciplinary Socio-Legal Studies Workshop, the Center on Globalization, Law and Society plays an important role in showcasing global law and society issues, socio-legal research plays a prominent role in the UC Irvine School of Law curriculum, and students may choose an emphasis in Law, Society, and Culture.
About the University of California, Irvine School of Law
The University of California, Irvine School of Law is a visionary law school that provides an innovative and comprehensive curriculum, prioritizes public service, and demonstrates a commitment to equity within the legal profession. Nearly half of all UCI Law’s J.D. graduates are people of color, and almost a third are first-generation students. At UCI Law, we are driven to improve our local, national, and global communities by grappling with important issues as scholars, as practitioners, and as teachers who are preparing the next generation of leaders. The collaborative and interdisciplinary community at UCI Law includes extraordinary students, world-renowned faculty, dedicated staff, engaged alumni, and enthusiastic supporters. Connect with us on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and sign up for our monthly newsletter for the latest news and events at UCI Law.