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I
n a fashion that ought to please followers of Carol Gilligan, I began composing
the acknowledgments to this volume long before I started the book itself. This
was because I have at all points felt deeply how much the work depends on a web
of relationships, on the contributions of so many people to whom I feel profoundly
indebted. Before I attempt to do justice to this rich relational context, let me thank
two institutions, the American Bar Foundation and the Spencer Foundation, for
the generous funding that made this project possible. Some of the material from
Chapter 2 is reprinted by permission of 
The Yale Journal of Law and the Humani-
ties
, Vol. 4, pp. 168–173; portions of Chapter 4 appeared originally in 
Natural
Histories of Discourse
, edited by Michael Silverstein and Greg Urban (University of
Chicago Press, pp. 229–249; © 1996 by The University of Chicago. All rights re-
served). Chapter 6 contains material from 
Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory
,
edited by Bambi Schieffelin, Kathryn Woolard, and Paul Kroskrity (pp. 149–162,
used by permission of Oxford University Press; © 1998 by Oxford University Press),
as well as material that is revised by permission from 
Democracy and Ethnography:
Constructing Identities in Multicultural Liberal States,
 edited by Carol J. Greenhouse
(The State University of New York Press, pp. 218–232; © 1998 by State University
of New York. All rights reserved). Thanks to the editors who worked on these
materials with me as well as to those who helped with articles to which I retained
copyright and from which I have drawn in this volume, which appeared in the
Journal of Legal Education
 48(1): 1–87 (with Wamucii Njogu and Susan Gooding),
and the 
John Marshall Law Review
 34(4): 91–117. I am also grateful to the many
colleagues—anonymous reviewers as well as many who are named below—who
have read and commented on parts of or all of the manuscript. Greg Matoesian
and Stewart Macaulay graciously provided thorough reviews of the linguistics and
Acknowledgments

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x
Acknowledgments
contract law discussions; any errors that remain despite their efforts are of course
my sole responsibility. Sincere thanks also to my wonderful OUP editors.
I wish to begin by acknowledging the team effort that goes into large-scale re-
search projects of this kind. I have on numerous occasions reflected with some
despair on the inadequacy of any mere acknowledgment to express my apprecia-
tion to the extraordinarily dedicated group of researchers who worked on this
project. Readers who know this field will recognize among the names on this list
gifted scholars who have gone on to make outstanding contributions in their own
right. Despite the sometimes dreary and plodding character of the work, everyone
carried through even the tougher moments with grace and energy, and with a sense
of camaraderie and fellowship. I thank Nancy Matthews, the first project manager,
for her vision, intellectual precision, and good humor in directing the nitty-gritty
daily work as we began the process of gaining access, taping, and formulating cod-
ing categories, as well as for her own contribution to in-class taping and coding of
one of the classes. Susan Gooding had the difficult task of taking over as project
manager in midstream, a job she tackled with a high degree of commitment both
to the people involved and to the project; her insights and conceptual rigor also
greatly enriched the interpretation of the results as they emerged. Wamucii Njogu,
who directed the bulk of the quantitative analysis, similarly insisted on careful
and critical examination of the coding and data; her flexibility and intellectual
curiosity in working across quantitative and qualitative aspects of the study
brought a unique and exciting dimension to the results. And a heartfelt thanks
to the exceptionally talented individuals who did the work of coding, inside and
outside of the classrooms: Jacqueline Baum, Nahum Chandler, Janina Fenigsen,
Leah Feldman, Christine Garza, Carolee Larsen, Mindie Lazarus-Black, Jerry
Lombardi, Kay Mohlman, Robert Moore, and Shepley Orr. Steve Neufeld, Carlos
de la Rosa, and Tom Murphy worked on the quantitative analysis. The tiring task
of transcription was undertaken with care by Diane Clay, Leah Feldman, and Zella
Coleman and her group.
I also thank the “subjects” of this research, the professors and students in the
eight classrooms we studied. Inviting researchers with tape recorders and coding
sheets into one’s classroom takes guts, and the professors who did so deserve com-
mendation for their willingness to take some risks in order to help advance our
understanding of the teaching process. Having now taught law school classes my-
self, I have a better appreciation of the courage it took to allow us to observe and
record in their classrooms.
I feel deeply grateful to the American Bar Foundation, my home since the
project began and one of the major funding sources for this research. The Foun-
dation has provided a uniquely congenial setting for this kind of work, with one of
the premier groups of sociolegal scholars in the country. I have enjoyed and learned
from my colleagues in that community, and I thank them for providing such an
encouraging and intellectually rich context in which to do research. I am particu-
larly grateful to the director of the Foundation during the time of this project, Bryant
Garth, for substantial support and encouragement, and for the vision of interdis-
ciplinary community that he has helped to make real. I owe much to all of my
colleagues, past and present, at the ABF for their incisive critiques and their humor,

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Acknowledgments
xi
and above all for their exercise of maturity, reason, and care in managing the ups
and downs of institutional life. For colleagueship above and beyond the call of duty,
I thank Carol Heimer and Bob Nelson, each of whom in different ways has pro-
vided highly valued support over many years now, as well as John Comaroff, Shari
Diamond, Chris Tomlins, Mary Rose, William Felstiner, Susan Shapiro, Laura Beth
Nielsen, Karyl Kinsey, Tracey Meares, Bonnie Honig, Annelise Riles, Steve Daniels,
Bette Sikes, and Roz Caldwell, from each of whose expertise I have drawn in spe-
cific ways. And Joanne Martin, of course—an indomitable force at the heart of the
ABF for years—provided her own eagle eye on our numbers as well as unflagging
enthusiasm for the project. In the final stages of preparing the manuscript, I was
very fortunate to have the assistance of Molly Heiler and Stephanie Lambert.
During the conclusion of the project, I had the good fortune to be invited to
join the legendary law-and-society community at the University of Wisconsin Law
School in Madison, for generations a leader among law schools in its insistence on
the study and teaching of “law in action.” I have learned a great deal from the per-
spectives and scholarship of my new colleagues, and from their insistence on un-
compromising standards for bringing together legal and social scientific work. In