Professor David S. Clark completed work on his comprehensive encyclopedia on law and society. The encyclopedia, the first of its kind in the field of law, aims to provide a global perspective on the academic field of law in relation to society.

The three-volume book, Encyclopedia of Law and Society: American and Global Perspectives, was published by Sage Publications and contains one million words.  The law faculty at Willamette University College of Law embarked on the ambitious project in 2001. An advisory board of 62 members from 20 countries and six continents helped develop the thematic approach to the book, stated Clark.

Five hundred authors worked on approximately 700 biographical, historical, comparative, topical, thematic, and methodological entries. The length of the topics varies from 500 to 5,000 words. The book’s wide-ranging topics include sociology, criminology, cultural anthropology, political science, social psychology, and economics.

Apart from the subject experts who contributed to the book, Prof. Clark wrote entries on comparative law for the book. Besides him, two other Willamette law professors, James A.R. Nafziger and Richard Birke, wrote on cultural heritage and sports law and on mediation and settlement, respectively. The thematic content table has been divided into 11 sections comprising Biographies in Law and Society, Demography of Law, Psychology and Law, Law and Economics, among others.

“By globalizing the encyclopedia’s coverage, American law and society will be better understood within its historical and comparative context,” said Prof. Clark. While commenting on the book’s interdisciplinary format, Clark
said that it tries to reveal in one platform “the truly holistic, interdisciplinary virtues of law and society.”

The scope of law varies from location and time. Therefore, in order to do a comprehensive study, he went “beyond the doctrinal approach to legal study” and studied “different dimensions of law from various cultural perspectives.”

The Encyclopedia will hit the stands in June 2007.