Pat Lauderdale is professor of justice and former director of the university-wide Ph.D./J.D. program in justice studies, law, and the social sciences. His teaching and research interests include comparative law, indigneous  jurisprudence, racialization, diversity, global indigenous struggles, and international terrorism. In the 1980s, he helped create the Herbert Blumer Institute in Costa Rica, which maintains the goal of discovering and describing alternatives to violence and criminal law.  The Institute has received new funding to support this work through 2023.

Recently, he was appointed as a visiting scholar at the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences at Stanford University. His seminal book "Law and Society" (with James Inverarity and Barry Feld) has been translated into Japanese. His related research has been published in Spanish, German, and Italian. Before coming to ASU, Lauderdale was an associate professor of sociology and law at the University of Minnesota, and a visiting scholar at University of Califorinia, Santa Cruz. He has received Fulbright Research Fellowships to Costa Rica and Austria. He also has been a visiting scholar and professor at the University of Lecci, Italy, the University of Austria, and Stanford University. He has received an invitation to be a Fulbright Senior Specialist for a research project on "Indigenous peoples, minorities and globalization," Department of Sociology and UNISA Press, University of South Africa. His book with Sing Chew explores the research of Andre Gundre Frank and his famous critique of world development and the marginalization of diversity. The second edition of Invitation to Globalogy:  Hegemony Unmasked is receiving critical acclaim. Lauderdale has been a National President of Phi Theta Kappa Honorary Society, President of the Independent Students Association (SDS), Oklahoma University, a Fulbright Senior Specialist, a GW rugby standout, and a Woodrow Wilson Scholar.