Conference: Law and Society Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco, May 28–31, 2026

From the organizers:

The LSA Annual Meeting will take place in San Francisco, California, USA, from May 28-31, 2026. The conference will be held at the Hilton Union Square. This meeting will be an entirely in-person meeting.

2026 Theme: Sanctuary

A sanctuary is a place of refuge or safety, especially for those who feel unwelcome outside it. In early modern Europe, the sanctuary was a sacred space, usually inside a church, where a fugitive would be immune from the law that was out to get them.

Today, the field of law and society offers a sanctuary for scholars searching beyond any single discipline to answer urgent questions about the legal, political, and social world. How is law and society a scholarly sanctuary, and what are the results of this? More generally, what does it mean to offer sanctuary in this political climate?

LSA’s return to San Francisco — a city that has long attracted outsiders and outcasts seeking sanctuary — provides an opportunity to reflect on these themes. We invite contributions on the many shades of sanctuary in law and society, as well as on other themes within the long and storied tradition of law and society scholarship.