• June 20-21: works-in-progress conference designed to allow practitioners and scholars interested in the area of collective redress to discuss their work with other experts.
• June 21-22: workshop with invited speakers from all over the world.

Both components are open to the public, but advance registration is required.

Abstracts for the works-in-progress workshop are due by May 1, 2012, to the organizer, Prof. S.I. Strong (Univ. of Missouri School of Law), strongsi@missouri.edu.   mw

Initial Preliminary Statements of Research Proposals, not to exceed one page, must be received by March 15, 2012, to receive full consideration for the 2012-13 funding cycle. SCJI will request a full proposal from selected authors by April 15, 2012. The 2011 SCJI Empirical Research Workshop will take place in June 2012.

SCJI will fully support certain accepted proposals by paying author(s) to lead the research efforts, providing in-house econometricians and legal experts as project staff, paying for necessary data (which includes employing large numbers of research assistants to find and code data that might otherwise by unavailable), and funding a comprehensive communications strategy for the final Public Policy Report.

More information is available on SSRN. mw

As the working title suggests, submissions should examine the various legal regimes – past, present, or proposed – used to resolve conflicts arising through online interactions between individuals, corporations, and governments. Although certainly not an exhaustive list, articles might address one of the following issues:

• Have traditional legal regimes adequately adapted to Internet-specific conflicts?
• Have we made strides in resolving jurisdictional and conflicts-of-law problems that arise from online interactions in multistate and multinational scenarios?
• Has the common law effectively adapted to address the unique characteristics of online disputes?
• Have legislatures taken the proper steps to effectively adapt legal standards to the Internet or online settings?
• How can the application of existing laws be improved in light of the proliferation of Internet transactions and actions?

We ask that interested authors give advance notice of intent to submit. The deadline for submission is Jan. 31. Please direct questions, notices of intent to submit, and submissions to Caleb J. Norris, Symposium Editor (cjnorris at ualr.edu).

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The workshop is open to non-tenured and recently tenured academics who teach and write in Federal Courts, Civil Rights Litigation, and associated topics. Those who do not currently hold a faculty appointment but expect to do so beginning in fall 2012 are welcome. The program is also open to scholars wanting to attend, read, and comment on papers but not present. There is no registration fee.

Abstracts are due by Nov. 15, 2011. Details on PrawfsBlawg. mw

OVERVIEW: The Branstetter Litigation & Dispute Resolution Program draws on a multimillion-dollar endowment to support research and curriculum in civil litigation and dispute resolution. The idea for the Branstetter “New Voices” workshop is to draw together scholars on civil justice issues who are in the first seven years of their academic careers. Four to six scholars will be chosen by anonymous review of the submitted papers. The audience will include invited junior scholars, Vanderbilt faculty, and invited guests. Previous participants include Nora Freeman Engstrom (Stanford), Maria Glover (Harvard), Margaret Lemos (Cardozo), Jonathan Mitchell (George Mason), Myriam Gilles (Cardozo), Donna Shestowsky (UC Davis), Benjamin Spencer (Washington & Lee), Amanda Tyler (George Washington), and Tobias Wolff (Pennsylvania).

The format for the workshop is designed to maximize collegial interaction and feedback. All participants will have read the selected papers. A senior faculty member will provide a brief overview and commentary on the paper, and then we are off and running with interactive discussion. Paper authors thus do not deliver prepared “presentations” as such. Rather, the overwhelming majority of each session is devoted to collective discussion of the paper involved.

PAPER SUBMISSION PROCEDURE:
1. Subject matter. Submitted papers should address an aspect of civil justice. Subject areas may include, but are not limited to, civil procedure, complex litigation, evidence, federal courts, judicial decision-making, alternative dispute resolution, remedies, and conflict of laws. In keeping with the intellectual breadth of the Branstetter Program faculty, we are very receptive to the full range of scholarly methodologies, from traditional doctrinal analysis to quantitative or experimental approaches.

2. Author qualifications. To be eligible to submit a paper, scholars must currently hold a permanent faculty position. In addition, scholars may not have held a position at assistant professor or higher (including visiting assistant professor) prior to 2004.

3. Format. Papers may be sent in either Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat format. To maintain the anonymity of the process, please remove any self-identifying information from the submission.

4. Deadline. Submissions should be e-mailed to Branstetter.Program@vanderbilt.edu no later than January 13, 2012. Please include your name, current position, and contact information in the e-mail accompanying the submission. We will contact you with our decision by February 15.

FURTHER INFORMATION: The Branstetter Program will pay all reasonable travel expenses within the United States for invited participants. If you have any questions, please email Professor Tracey George, Branstetter Program Director, at Branstetter.Program@vanderbilt.edu.

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To that end, we are soliciting submissions that either (1) focus on specific contributions of Professor Miller with respect to access to justice inside and outside the legal academy, or (2) speculate as to future trends and possible issues relating to access in the civil system.
Submissions must be received by Jan. 2, 2012.

mw

The topic of our panel (Jan. 6, 8:30-12:15) will be “Procedural Reform: Rulemaking v. Legislation.” Procedural reform has enjoyed (or suffered from, depending on one’s point of view) considerable attention in recent years. Procedural topics are in the mainstream media. Supreme Court cases have reformed bedrock principles. Rulemakers regularly debate amendments to an ever-expanding corpus of rules. And the legislative branch seeks to undo some reforms while initiating still others.

Papers presented by the panel will put this constellation of procedural reforms into a broader perspective. The debate about whether procedural reform is more properly the province of rulemakers or lawmakers is neither new nor, perhaps, even resolvable. Yet it remains relevant-urgent, even, given the stakes. We invite the submission of papers that address this topic in whole or in part. Papers that address the topic in whole might, for example, consider the use of empirical evidence as an engine for procedural reform. Or institutional choice theory might be applied to the procedural landscape. Even if your work addresses the topic only in part, we encourage you to submit it; we will be selecting papers so that the panel, considered as a whole, will generate a dialogue to explore the broader issues.

Drafts of the papers submitted for consideration must be received by September 1, 2011. Submissions should be sent to tmain[at]pacific.edu. Papers already accepted for publication will be considered.
mw; updated 6/12/11 mw.

The topic of our panel will be “Procedural Reform: Rulemaking v. Legislation.” Procedural reform has enjoyed (or suffered from, depending on one’s point of view) considerable attention in recent years. Procedural topics are in the mainstream media. Supreme Court cases have reformed bedrock principles. Rulemakers regularly debate amendments to an ever-expanding corpus of rules. And the legislative branch seeks to undo some reforms while initiating still others.

Papers presented by the panel will put this constellation of procedural reforms into a broader perspective. The debate about whether procedural reform is more properly the province of rulemakers or lawmakers is neither new nor, perhaps, even resolvable. Yet it remains relevant-urgent, even, given the stakes. We invite the submission of papers that address this topic in whole or in part. Papers that address the topic in whole might, for example, consider the use of empirical evidence as an engine for procedural reform. Or institutional choice theory might be applied to the procedural landscape. Even if your work addresses the topic only in part, we encourage you to submit it; we will be selecting papers so that the panel, considered as a whole, will generate a dialogue to explore the broader issues.

Drafts of the papers submitted for consideration must be received by September 1, 2011. Submissions should be sent to tmain@pacific.edu. Papers already accepted for publication will be considered.

sr