ABSTRACT
When it signed on to the American Sociological Association’s amicus curiae brief in the 2003 Michigan affirmative action case, the Law and Society Association (LSA) claimed an ‘expertise’ in researching and discussing race. But do LSA members engage in race scholarship more often than their colleagues? And is LSA race scholarship qualitatively superior? This study first compares the number of race articles in the Law and Society Review to the number of race articles in the leading law reviews at the ‘Top 20’ law schools over an 18-year period to see if law and society scholars publish on race matters more often than their peers. It then evaluates the 18-year sample of race articles in the Law and Society Review to identify any trends or tendencies with regard to how law and society scholars research and discuss race. This data shows that, as a statistical matter, the Law and Society Review publishes articles on race less frequently than all but three of the top generic law reviews. It also reveals that race articles published in the Law and Society Review are prone to important substantive and methodological problems. This article closes by suggesting that the substantive and methodological approaches in the amicus brief could be fruitfully used as a template for future law and society race research.
