Branstetter Litigation & Dispute Resolution Academic Events

The Litigation & Dispute Resolution program regularly sponsors scholarly symposia and workshops that bring the leading thinkers in its subject areas to Vanderbilt.

Upcoming Events

 "Are Supreme Court Justices Merely Legislators in Robes?" September 12, 2012

Jeffrey Segal, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Stony Brook Department of Political Science, will present this paper in a faculty workshop in the Alexander Room from noon to 1 p.m.

"Lessons of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Trust," a talk by Kent Syverud - September 22, 2011, noon to 1 p.m.

The Cecil D. Branstetter Litigation & Dispute Resolution Program is sponsoring this lecture by Dean Kent Syverud of the Washington University School of Law, who is one of two individual trustees of the $20 billion trust created by BP in negotiations with the White House to compensate holders of resolved damaged claims from the spill.

2012 New Voices in Civil Justice Workshop, May 7, 2012

Vanderbilt Law School and the Cecil D. Branstetter Litigation & Dispute Resolution Program will host the 2012 New Voices in Civil Justice Scholarship Workshop at Vanderbilt on May 7, 2012 

 

Recent Events

Conference: New Voices in Civil Justice Scholarship held on April 29, 2011 Visiting participants included:

  • Nora Freeman Engstrom, Assistant Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
  • Maria Glover, Climenko Fellow and Lecturer in Law, Harvard Law School
  • Margaret Lemos, Associate Professor of Law, Cardozo Law School
  • Jonathan Mitchell, on leave from George Mason University Law School, Solicitor General of Texas
  • Jay Tidmarsh, Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School

Reception Honoring Judge Jane Branstetter Stranch, Class of 1978, February 25, 2011

Conference: Empirical Research on Multidistrict Litigation, held October 1, 2010

U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation - September Session, hosted at Vanderbilt Law School on September 30, 2010.

MDL panel RIGHT

The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation held its September 2010 hearing session at Vanderbilt Law School. Seven federal circuit and district judges sit on the MDL Panel, which may transfer factually related actions filed in different federal districts to a single judge for centralized pretrial litigation. In the 40 years since the Panel was formed, it has transferred more than 325,000 lawsuits, including high-profile securities and derivative lawsuits (the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the Ponzi scheme of Bernie Madoff), consumer claims (Countrywide Mortgage’s lending practices), and mass torts such as the Vioxx litigation, to single judges.

 

In addition to coordinating the MDL Panel hearings at Vanderbilt. the Branstetter Litigation & Dispute Resolution Program sponsored a conference addressing Empirical Research on Multidistrict Litigation on October 1, 2010.