This roundtable discussion explores the potential for interdisciplinary design to improve legal institutions and education. In recent years, the push toward interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching has grown stronger in the legal academy, but there has been little quality control over what constitutes “interdisciplinary.” Determining exactly what makes a project interdisciplinary is not self-evident, and sometimes, rather than by careful design and methodology, haphazard projects are self-deemed “interdisciplinary” merely because ideas, methods, or models are imported from other fields of study. Sometimes, however, this is done with little mastery in field, or worse, the inability to use knowledge effectively due to a lack of training in that very field.
Against this existential backdrop, this roundtable discussion explores how interdisciplinary approaches can be applied to improve the law as well as legal scholarship and education. It builds from the premise that understanding law is inextricable from understanding individuals, institutions, and society, and that all are critical to the project of legal reform. The discussion will focus on gender studies, psychology, ritual theory, and modes of studying law through multiple subject areas.