ACTIVITIES

     Today the Society is a thriving organization of about 100 institutional sponsor members and a growing number of individual members. In the aggregate these members represent most of the sustained support for scholarly activities in comparative and private international law in the United States. Members range from the Chinese Law Society of America to practically every leading American law school. In recent years non-United States institutions, such as Bucerius Law School (Hamburg) and McGill University Institute of Comparative Law (Montreal) have joined the Society, making it more of an international forum for comparative studies.  In many respects the founders' vision has more than been realized 50 years later. For instance, a survey of the top 25 comparative and international law journals ranked The American Journal of Comparative Law among the top two (along with the American Journal of International Law), much higher on a weighted scale than the next rated journals. Crespi, 31 Int'l Law. 869, 874 (1997).

     Furthermore, the Society is the designated national committee to the quadrennial international congresses organized by the International Academy of Comparative Law. This led in the mid-1990s to substantial growth in United States participation, which ever since has represented the largest foreign contingent at these meetings. Also significant for the ASCL's international role is its collaboration with important sister organizations (as corresponding institutional members) elsewhere in the world. The Society is thus highly visible in comparative law on a global level.

     While in these ways giving comparative law in the United States its international image, the Society is primarily devoted to promoting the comparative study of law in America. Through its annual meetings and the scholarly programs held on the occasion of those meetings, it provides the essential forum for communication, education, and networking among the active comparativists serving as directors of the ASCL, editors of the Journal, and other members. Most years as well the ASCL confers the Yntema Prize on the outstanding young author of an article appearing in the Journal. But there is more that can be done in an era when comparative and international studies in American law schools have expanded at such a rapid rate. As the Society reached its 50th year it debated and implemented in 2000 a report prepared by its Long-Range Planning Committee that promises in the first years of the 21st century to further develop its membership base and invigorate programmatic activities.