Richard L. Abel, PhD is Michael J. Connell Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor, UCLA, USA.  He is the author of the  “Defending American Democracy” mini-series (Routledge; Dec 2023 –  2025) that includes How Autocrats Abuse Power: Resistance to Trump and Trumpism (Routledge; December 28, 2023), How Autocrats Attack Expertise: Resistance to Trump and Trumpism (Routledge; December 28, 2023), How Autocrats Seek Power: Resistance to Trump and Trumpism (Routledge ; March 26, 2024) and How Autocrats Are Held Accountable: Resistance to Trump and Trumpism (Routledge; 2025). 

Professor Abel is an internationally recognized scholar, who has written about law from a social scientific perspective in countries as varied as the U.S., England, South Africa and Kenya. He has been honored by UCLA, University of Westminster, Cardiff University, London School of Economics, Leeds University, and University of New South Wales and by the Law and Society Association, ISA Research Committee on Sociology of Law, American Bar Foundation, American Political Science Association, and National Equal Justice Library. He has been president of the Law and Society Association, Vice President of the ISA Research Committee on Sociology of Law, and Editor of the Law & Society Review and African Law Studies. He was a founding member of the Conference on Critical Legal Studies and the UCLA Law School Program in Public Interest Law and Policy. He taught at UCLA for 35 years, as well as at Yale, USC, NYU, Fordham, and CUNY.

Professor Abel’s previous books include Law’s Trials: The Performance of Legal Institutions in the U.S. “War on Terror” (2018); Law’s Wars: The Fate of the Rule of Law in the U.S. “War on Terror” (2018); Lawyers on Trial: Understanding Ethical Misconduct (2011); Lawyers in the Dock: Learning from Attorney Disciplinary Proceedings (2008); English Lawyers between Market and State: The Politics of Professionalism (2003); Speaking Respect, Respecting Speech (1998); Lawyers: A Critical Reader (1997); Politics by Other Means: Law in the Struggle Against Apartheid, 1980-1994 (1995); The Law & Society Reader (1995); Speech and Respect (1994); American Lawyers (1989); and The Legal Profession in England and Wales (1988). He was co-editor of Lawyers in 21^st-Century Societies (2 vols. 2020, 2022) and Lawyers in Society (four volumes, 1988-89, 1995); editor of The Politics of Informal Justice (two volumes, 1982); and author of over a hundred articles and book chapters, some translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Turkish, Korean, and Chinese.

Dr. Abel spent two years after law school reading African law and legal anthropology in London, and then a year of field work in Kenya studying the ways in which primary courts staffed by and serving the African population had preserved indigenous notions of law and procedure within European institutions. He began teaching at Yale in 1969 and spent the 1971-72 year practicing with the New Haven Legal Assistance Association.