In Memory of Richard (Red) D. Schwartz 1925–2017 Founding Editor of the Review
The Law and Society Association recently learned of the passing of Richard (Red) D. Schwartz on October 10, 2017, at the age of 92. Red Schwartz, Robert Yegge of the University of Denver, and Harry Ball of the University of Wisconsin (both of whom pre-deceased him in 2008 and 2006 respectively) were the three signers of the articles of incorporation of the Law and Society Association in 1964. Schwartz was the founding editor of the Law & Society Review from 1966 through 1968 and the fourth president of LSA from 1972 to 1975. Here we honor the contributions of this giant in the field of law and society.
Schwartz received his PhD in Sociology at Yale in the early 1950s, was one of the early social scientists (in the late 1950s) at the Yale Law School, went on to have a distinguished career at Northwestern University's Department of Sociology and as dean of the SUNY Buffalo Law School in the 1970s. Later, when on the faculty of law at Syracuse University, he helped that school enhance its law and society programming. In retirement he returned to New Haven, Connecticut, where he had an affiliation with the Yale Law School. He continued to attend LSA meetings, greeting friends from his wheelchair, through 2013. In that year LSA honored him with the new Ronald Pipkin Service Award.
Schwartz had a distinguished record of scholarship and an even more distinguished record of institution-building. Perhaps his most famous publication, frequently reprinted and assigned in courses in law, political science, anthropology, and sociology of law courses, is “Social Factors in the Development of Legal Controls: A Case Study of Two Israeli Settlements,” a study of law and social control on kibbutzim and moshavim in pre-state Israel published in the Yale Law Journal in 1954. His continuing contacts in Israel contributed to the strong tradition of sociolegal scholarship in that country.
As an institution-builder, he was long associated with the Russell Sage Foundation and was one of the scholars who was instrumental in shaping the Foundation's program in law and behavioral sciences, which led to law and society programs at Berkeley, Northwestern, Denver, Wisconsin, and Yale. This program provided legal training and post docs for well over one hundred scholars, many of whom have been leading lights in the Law and Society Association. He was also the first non-lawyer dean at SUNY-Buffalo Law School, founding the Baldy Center for Law & Social Policy and placing the law and society mark on the law school that remains alive and well today.
Schwartz played many roles in institutionalizing the Law and Society Association. He was one of the organizers of the first proto-LSA meeting, a rump group at the ASA meeting in Montreal in 1961, when a group of scholars interested in the sociology of law met and agreed that “there ought to be an association….” He helped frame the Russell Sage Foundation's policies that stimulated the establishment and then growth of the LSA. He helped draft the by-laws of a new association, and took time to establish a mailing list and marshal the interest of other scholars.
He also took the initiative to establish the new Association's journal, the Law & Society Review, and was its first, founding editor. From his position at Northwestern, he recruited major figures in political science (Vic Rosenblum), anthropology (Paul Bohanan), law (Jack Coons), Donald Campbell (psychology) and still others to serve on the editorial board, and he reached across the country (from Harvard to Yale to Chicago to Berkeley; including Lon Fuller, Talcott Parsons, Abe Goldstein, Philip Selznick, Nelson Polsby, Joe Gusfield, Harry Kalven, Sam Krislov, Ad Hoebel) to attract more, and he drew in scholars from abroad. From the outset he wanted the LSR to address scholars around the world. In addition, he started a tradition with the Review that continues until this day. He obtained funding to hire a handful of graduate student editors, who were able to develop their confidence and skills in the field.
Finally, he launched the transition from LSA holding its meetings as adjuncts to meetings of other associations—mostly the American Sociological Association—to holding meetings of its own. Schwartz inaugurated his new deanship at SUNY-Buffalo by hosting the first free-standing national meeting of the Association in the new law school building at SUNY Buffalo in 1975. Starting in 1978, those meetings became annual.
A 2013 recorded interview with Schwartz appears as part of the series of Conversation in Law and Society of the Center for the Study of Law & Society of the University of California Berkeley: http://media.law.berkeley.edu/qtmedia/JSP/20130718_JSP.mp4.
