David M Engel
SUNY Distinguished Service Professor
A.B., Harvard University, 1967
J.D and MA, University of Michigan, 1974
University at Buffalo Law School
The State University of New York
415 O'Brian
Hall, North Campus
Buffalo, NY 14260-1100
Phone:(716) 645-2514
Faculty Assistant:
Suzanne Caruso, 417 O'Brian Hall, Phone: (716) 645-5598
Biography:
David M. Engel is SUNY Distinguished Service Professor of Law. He currently serves as chair of UB's Council on International Studies and Programs, an advisory body to the Provost. From 1991 to 2001, he served as Director of the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy and as Vice Dean for Interdisciplinary Studies; and from 2002 to 2008 he was Director of International Programs at the law school. He is faculty adviser to the Asian Law Students Association and a member of UB's Asian Studies Advisory Council, which he chaired from 1999-2001.
Engel teaches courses on Torts and Products Liability and seminars on Injuries and on Law, Culture, and Society as well as a Directed Readings Course for General LL.M. students. He also teaches the Thailand Bridge Course, which takes UB Law students to Chiangmai, Thailand in January for intensive study of Thai legal culture.
Engel's research deals with law and society in the United States and in other countries, particularly Thailand, where he has lived, worked, and taught for many years. He has studied legal culture and legal consciousness in communities in the American Midwest and in Thailand. In addition, he has conducted research on the effects of Special Education Law on the families of children with disabilities and their interactions with school district administrators. With his colleague, Frank W. Munger, he published Rights of Inclusion: Law and Identity in the Life Stories of Americans with Disabilities (University of Chicago Press: 2003), dealing with the effects of legal rights created by the Americans with Disabilities Act on the lives and careers of men and women with disabilities. With Michael McCann, Engel is co-editor of a collection of comparative and interdisciplinary essays about tort law, entitled Fault Lines: Tort Law and Cultural Practice (Stanford University Press: 2009). He is currently engaged in a study of injuries, law, and social change in Thailand. A theme common to all of his research is the significance of cultural practices and legal consciousness for the workings of law and legal institutions.
Engel is an active member of the Law & Society Association, an international membership organization which he served as President from 1997-1998. He was also a member of the Advisory Panel of the National Science Foundation Program for Law and Social Sciences and the LSAC Grants Sub-Committee. In 2005/6, he was selected as the inaugural occupant of the Sturm Distinguished Visiting Chair at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.
Selected Publications:
Books
Spirit of the Laws and Laws of the Spirits: Globalization and Tort Law in Thailand (forthcoming)
Fault Lines: Tort Law and Cultual Practice (with Michael McCann) (Stanford University Press, 2009)
Rights of Inclusion: Law and Identity in the Life Stories of Americans with Disabilities (with Frank W.Munger) (University of Chicago Press, 2003) (Recipient of Myers Outstanding Book Award for 2003)
Code and Custom in a Thai provincial Court : the Interaction of Formal and Informal Systems of Justice (University of Arizona Press, Association for Asian Studies Monograph Series, 1978)
Articles
Reading the Landscape of Injuries: The Lost Pathway to Law (forthcoming)
"Landscapes of the Law: Injury, Remedy, and Social Change in Thailand, 43 Law & Society Review 61 (2009) [SSRN]
Narrative, Disability, and Identity (with Frank W.Munger) Narrative vol. 15: 85-94 (2007)
Religiosity and the Invocation of Law in the Conversation with the Dalai Lama (Commentary: Law, Buddhism, and Social Change: A Conversation with the 14th Dalai Lama, September 20-21, 2006), Buffalo Law Review vol. 55: 681-684 (2007) [SSRN]
Globalization and the Decline of Legal Consciousness: Torts, Ghosts, and Karma in Thailand, Law and Social Inquiry vol. 30: 469-514 (2005) [SSRN]
The Americans with Disabilities Act and the Shaping of Careers: Insights from Life Story Narratives (with Frank W.Munger) Ohio State Law Journal vol. 62: 285-333 (2001)
Presidential Address – Making Connections: Law and Society Researchers and Their Subjects, Law & Society Review vol. 33: 3-16 (1999) [BNet]
Rights, Remembrance, and the Reconciliation of Difference (with Frank W.Munger) Law & Society Review vol. 30: 7-53 (1996) (Recipient of 1997 Article Prize of Law & Society Association)
Origin Myths: Narratives of Authority, Resistance, Disability, and Law, Law & Society Review vol. 27: 785-826 (1993) [JSTOR]
The Oven Bird's Song: Insiders, Outsiders, and Personal Injuries in an American Community, Law & Society Review vol. 18: 551-582 (1984) [JSTOR] (reprinted in The Social Organization of Law (M.P. Baumgartner, editor) (Academic Press, 2nd edition, 1998); The Law and Society Reader (R.L. Abel, editor) (New York University Press, 1995); American Court Systems: Readings in Judicial Process and Behavior (S. Goldman & A. Sarat, editors) (Longman, 2nd edition, 1989))
Chapters
Injury, Causation, and Responsibility: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Tort Law in Society, Fault Lines: Tort Law and Cultual Practice (D.M. Engel & M. McCann, editors) (Stanford University Press, 2009)
Globalization and Law in Everyday Life, Encyclopedia of Law and Society: American and Global Perspectives (Sage Publications, 2007)
Injury and Identity: The Damaged Self in Three Cultures, Between Law and Culture (D.T. Goldberg, M. Musheno & L. Bower, editors) (University of Minnesota Press, 2001) (3-21) (translated into Japanese and reprinted in Tokai University Law Review vol. 26 (2001))
Law in the Domains of Everyday Life: The Construction of Community and Difference, Law in Everyday Life (A. Sarat & T.R. Kearns, editors) (University of Michigan Press, 1993) (123-170) (translated into Japanese and reprinted in Tokai University Law Review vol. 24 (2000) and vol. 25 (2001))
Law and Community, Three American Towns (with Carol Greenhouse and Barbara Yngvesson) (Cornell University Press, 1994) (Recipient of Jacobs Book Prize for outstanding book in the field of law and society in 1995 and 1996)
