expanding knowledge, advancing justice
The American Bar Foundation is an organization dedicated to advancing justice through rigorous research on the law, legal practices, and the law’s impact on our society.
The American Bar Foundation is the nation’s leading research institute for the empirical study of law. An independent, nonprofit organization for more than fifty years, ABF seeks to advance the understanding and improvement of law through research projects of unmatched scale and quality on the most pressing issues facing the legal system in the United States and the world.
… (full text Mission).
Homepage;
Letter, highlights; Board news; Report; FAQs;
Address: American Bar Foundation, 750 North Lake Shore Drive, 4th floor, Chicago, IL 60611, USA;
General Contacts; Media Contact; Staff contacts; Officer contacts.
Historical Timeline: Since its founding in 1952, the American Bar Foundation has become the preeminent provider of empirical research fundamental to legal institutions and legal processes.
It has achieved this preeminence by supporting independent research that combines the best tools of social science analysis with a variety of intellectual perspectives associated with disciplines ranging from law, economics, political science and history to sociology, psychology and anthropology. Today, ABF Research Fellows are among the leading scholars in all of these disciplines.
While it is essential that the Foundation draw on the talents of leading scholars in their fields, it is equally important that these scholars use their talents to understand legal phenomena as they affect real people and events. The Foundation’s projects repeatedly produce findings of specific relevance to the legal profession and of more general importance to our society.
Key to the strength of the ABF is the ongoing and significant financial support generously provided by the American Bar Endowment. The ABF has also benefited in its first half-century form the valued contributions of the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation. The story of this first half-century is summarized in the pages that follow and is dedicated to all of those individuals who have made the first fifty years just the beginning.
1951 to 2020: … (full long Timeline).