Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy

Christopher Baldy graduated from the Buffalo School of Law in 1910, in the days when UB was a private school. He died a bachelor and left most of his estate, initially valued at $1.4 million, to his three brothers, stipulating that when they died, the remainder would be a gift to UB.^[4]

A surrogate judge in 1973 approved using the Baldy funding to start a new program in law and social policy, a subject area favored by UB’s law dean, Red Schwartz, a sociologist and the first-ever non-interim dean of an American law school who was not a lawyer. Schwartz was a key figure in the Law and Society movement that emerged in the 1960s and sought to explore how the law actually interacted with society, as opposed to the more formalistic, theoretical and academic approach that permeated legal scholarship for much of the 20th century.

Five years later, under then-Dean Thomas Headrick, the program in law and social policy was formalized into The Baldy Center.^[2]

From 1981 to 2009, the Center hosted the peer-reviewed academic journal Law & Policy.^[5]

For much of its history, The Baldy Center’s activities were organized around working groups focused on specific research areas. The number of groups fluctuated over time and during the 1990s were concentrated into more formal Baldy Programs such as Environmental Law and Policy; Children, Families and the Law; Community and Difference; Law, Gender and Social Policy; Human Rights Law and Policy; and Regulation and Public Policy.^[6]

After 2010, the Center retired the working groups model and instituted its fellowship program while continuing to focus on conferences, book manuscript workshops and supporting research.^[7] In 2020, The Baldy Center developed The Baldy Center Podcast and The Baldy Center Blog as online mechanisms to share law and social policy research performed by UB scholars and former Center fellows. ^[8]

Directors of the Baldy Center have included Barry B. Boyer (co-director 1978-81; director 1981-92), Jim Brady (co-director 1978-81), David M. Engel (1992-2001), Lynn Mather (2002-08), Rebecca French (2008-10), Errol Meidinger (interim director 2001-02; director 2010-2019), Samantha Barbas (2019-2024), and Matthew Dimick (2024-present). ^[9]

Assistant directors have included Wendy Katkin (1978-85), Venice Feeley Cadwallader (1986-90), Laura Mangan (1990-2006; 2008-09), Laura Wirth (2009-2019), and Caroline Funk (2019-2022).^[10] Amanda M. Benzin joined The Baldy Center as Associate Director in 2022.