Shauhin Talesh Elected to the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation
Professor Shauhin Talesh has been elected a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation (ABF). Membership is limited to just one percent of lawyers licensed to practice in each jurisdiction. Members are nominated by their peers and selected by the ABF Board.
The ABF Fellows is a global honorary society that recognizes attorneys, judges, law faculty and legal scholars whose public and private careers have demonstrated outstanding dedication to the highest principles of the legal profession and to the welfare of their communities. ABF Fellows hail from nearly 40 countries and hold a wide variety of influential roles.
In addition to supporting and being involved with the ABF’s empirical, interdisciplinary research in law and social science, Talesh will participate in educational and scholarly programs held throughout the year, including those held in conjunction with the ABA Midyear and Annual Meetings.
Professor Talesh is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work spans law, sociology, and political science. His research interests include the empirical study of law and business organizations, dispute resolution, consumer protection, insurance, and the relationship between law and social inequality. Talesh is considered one of the leading scholars on organizational responses to law and compliance and the relationship between insurance, regulation and inequality.
Talesh’s empirical research addresses the intersection between organizations, risk, and consumer protection laws, focusing on private organizations' responses to and constructions of laws designed to regulate them, consumers' mobilization of their legal rights and the legal cultures of private organizations. His most recent research focuses on how cyber insurance shapes cybersecurity and privacy law compliance among private organizations.
Talesh has channeled his interdisciplinary approach to UC Irvine. For the past eight years, he has served as Director of the Law & Graduate Studies Program. In that role, he advises all concurrent degree students, with special attention to those pursuing a JD and PhD simultaneously. He is also a co-founding member of the Law, Society and Culture Emphasis program.
Professor Talesh’s prominence as a scholar has led to elected and appointed leadership positions in national organizations. He Chaired the Sociology of Law Section of the American Sociological Association (ASA). In 2019-20, he served as Chair-Elect and Program Chair at the ASA Annual Meeting, and he previously served as elected Secretary/Treasurer of the section 2017-2019. He was also elected Chair of the American Association of Law School’s Insurance Law Section in 2019, after previously serving as elected Secretary, Treasurer, and Chair-Elect.
In 2019, Professor Talesh was selected for the inaugural class of UC Irvine Beall Applied Innovation Faculty Innovation Fellows, a program established “to recognize faculty who have a record of translating their society-impacting research as well as to make them ambassadors for UCI’s innovation culture.”
Talesh’s scholarship has appeared in multiple law and peer-reviewed social science journals including Law and Society Review, Law & Social Inquiry, and Law & Policy, and has won multiple awards in Sociology, Political Science and Law & Society.