Interdisciplinary Studies

The Notre Dame Law School offers a range of programs that confront the increasingly interdisciplinary dimensions of law and legal practice. The Law School faculty has teamed up with leading professors from other Notre Dame colleges and departments to create six NDLS Interdisciplinary Programs.

Program on Church, State, and Society

This program focuses on the role of religious institutions, religious communities, and religious authorities in the social order and how law structures these relationships. The program will build on the academic strengths housed in Law School, as well as in the University’s colleges and centers.

Richard W. Garnett, Director

Program on Constitutional Structure

The Notre Dame Program on Constitutional Structure promotes interdisciplinary learning of how constitutional structures operate—in the United States and abroad—€”by supporting extensive curricular offerings, promoting faculty and student research, and sponsoring a rich array of lectures, conferences, and other events. The program helps prepare students for careers in all areas of public law.

Anthony J. Bellia Jr., Director

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Program on Family Law Mediation

This Program will be situated within the Law School’s Legal Aid Clinic. It is a cooperative venture funded by the Office of Institutional Research, the Department of Psychology in the College of Arts and Letters, and the Law School. In this innovative clinic, law students will be paired with psychology students and mediate disputes between divorcing and separating parents under the supervision of clinical professionals. The skills learned will include mediation as well as working in interdisciplinary teams.

Margaret Brinig and Michael Jenuwine, Directors

Program on Law and Economics

The Notre Dame Law and Economics (NDL&E) Program promotes interdisciplinary research and scholarship in law and economics, law and the social sciences, and law and business. NDL&E offers an innovative workshop, the Law and Economics Seminar, in which both faculty and students can participate, with students enrolling for course credit. NDL&E also hosts an annual symposium with two keynote speakers, typically one legal scholar and one economist, and commentators from the Law School, the Department of Economics, and elsewhere.

Daniel Kelly and Margaret Brinig, Directors

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Program on Law and Human Development

The Program on Law and Human Development at Notre Dame Law School aims to serve as a forum and catalyst for interdisciplinary scholarship, teaching and service on the role of law and justice in the development of individuals and communities. The program’s guiding concept, integral human development, is deeply rooted in Catholic social thought and is reflected in the best models for understanding the process of promoting human flourishing in a globalized world.

Paolo Carozza, Faculty Director and Christine Cervenak, Program Director

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The Research Program on Law and Market Behavior (ND LAMB)

The Research Program on Law and Market Behavior (ND LAMB) at Notre Dame Law School is dedicated to promoting foundational research that contributes to scholarly and policy thinking about a range of important and timely issues at the intersection of law and market behavior. Specifically, ND LAMB promotes high-impact, interdisciplinary research across a number of interrelated legal fields that study these issues—most notably, corporate governance, antitrust, intellectual property, property and contract, and market regulation more generally. In pursuing its research agenda, the Program draws extensively on relevant extra-legal research in disciplines ranging from psychology to economics, business, and beyond. ND LAMB focuses, moreover, on promoting original legal scholarship that emphasizes observational and experimental empirical methods, through conferences, workshops, visitors and speakers, research support and collaborations with relevant programs and institutes worldwide.

Avishalom Tor, Program Director

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