A scholar of public law and a specialist in social science research, Frank Munger teaches Constitutional Law, Social Welfare Policy, Local Government, Land Use Planning and seminars on contemporary justice, poverty, and globalization issues.

Currently he is using his expertise in social science research to study the poverty of low-wage workers, global human rights, and America’s rapidly evolving social welfare policies.

He has conducted research in the United States, Europe, and Southeast Asia, and his recent books include Laboring Below the Line: The New Ethnography of Poverty, Low-wage Work, and Survival in the Global Economy (2002), a collection of essays by leading poverty scholars, economists, historians, and lawyers on the future of low-wage work and poverty in a globalizing economy, based on papers delivered at a conference he organized with funding from the Russell Sage Foundation. Rights of Inclusion: Law and Identity in the Lives of Americans with Disabilities (2003), is coauthored with Professor David Engel (SUNY Buffalo) and received the Gustavus Meyers Human Rights Award in 2003. An earlier coauthored article, "Rights, Remembrance and the Reconciliation of Difference," published in the Law & Society Review, received the first annual Law and Society Article Award in 1997. Rights of Inclusion describes the subtle and informal influence of rights on the everyday lives of persons with disabilities. His most recent book, Law and Poverty (2006) is an edited collection of classic interdisciplinary essays published in 2006 intended as a resource for teachers and poverty scholars. He is currently writing a book about his empirical research on the effects devolution and privatization of welfare administration. He is also conducting fieldwork in Southeast Asia (Thailand) through interviews with lawyers, law teachers, and ordinary people about the impact of recent constitutional reforms and global pressure for legal change.

 

Professor Munger has been General Editor of the Law & Society Review, President of the Law and Society Association, Chair of the Section on Sociology of Law of the American Sociological Association, Chair of the Law and Social Sciences section of the American Association of Law Schools, and has served on numerous editorial boards and government research review panels. He has served as Academic Dean of Antioch Law School. Currently, he is a member of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York Social Welfare Committee. He is a co organizer of the New York Law and Society Colloquium, an interdisciplinary workshop featuring leading international scholars sponsored jointly by New York Law School and the Law and Society Institute at New York University. Read more