Elizabeth Mertz
Elizabeth Mertz is a linguistic in addition to legal anthropologist who is also the law professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, where she teaches types law courses. She has been on the research faculty of the American Bar Foundation since 1989. She has a PhD in Anthropology from Duke University where she studied with Virginia R. DomÃnguez together with William O'Barr and a JD from Northwestern University where she was the John Paul Stevens scholar and a Wigmore Scholar. Her early research focused on language, identity and politics in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and her dissertation dealt with Linguistic communication shift in Cape Breton Scottish Gaelic, drawing on semiotic anthropology. Her later research examines the language of U.S. legal education in ingredient using linguistic anthropological approaches see her book The Language of Law School. She writes on semiotics, anthropology, and law, among other topics. She has been editor of Law & Social Inquiry and of PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review.