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An Incubator for Litigation Scholarship

The Branstetter Litigation and Dispute Resolution Program brings together leading academics to address evidence, class actions and other key litigation topics through such initiatives as the Excited Utterance podcast, founded and produced by evidence scholar Ed Cheng, and through frequent workshops and speakers.

Representative events include:

2019 International Class Actions Conference

Co-sponsored with the Law and Business Program, this conference drew judges, practitioners, and scholars from around the world to discuss global trends in class action litigation.

2019 Excited Utterance Summer Workshop

This workshop was organized by evidence scholar Ed Cheng, who established and hosts the “Excited Utterance” evidence law podcast, with the help of Alex Nunn of the University of Arkansas, Julia Simon-Kerr of the University of Connecticut and Maggie Wittlin of the University of Nebraska. It featured presentations on evidence of wrongful convictions, forensic weapon identification, character impeachment, brain-based memory detection, legal proof, burden of proof, corroboration and other topics.

New Voices in Civil Justice Workshop

The Branstetter New Voices Workshop brings together junior scholars, senior scholars, and Vanderbilt faculty in the areas of civil justice. Junior scholars are selected via a blind review process to present at the New Voices Workshop. The New Voices format maximizes collegial interaction and feedback. Paper authors do not deliver prepared "presentations." Rather, all participants read the selected papers prior to the session, and at each workshop, a senior faculty member provides a brief overview and commentary on the paper. Open and interactive discussion immediately follows.

2016 New Voices in Civil Justice WorkshopSelected junior participants have included:

  • Anna Carpenter, University of Tulsa College of Law
  • Zachary Clopton, Cornell Law School (then at University of Chicago Law School as a Public Law Fellow)
  • Charles Korsmo, Case Western Reserve University School of Law
  • Minor Myers, Brooklyn Law School 
  • Colleen Shanahan, Temple university Beasley School of Law (then at Georgetown University Law Center as a visiting associate professor of law)
  • Nora Freeman Engstrom, Stanford Law School
  • Maria Glover, Georgetown Law School (then at Harvard Law School (Climenko Fellow))
  • Margaret Lemos, Duke Law School (then at Cardozo School of Law)
  • Jonathan Mitchell, Hoover Institution Visiting Fellow