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.
Selected junior participants have included:The class action lawsuit—where one person sues on behalf of everyone who has been harmed the same way by a company or an individual—is a potent way for ordinary people to force powerful entities to comply with the law, says Vanderbilt law professor Brian Fitzpatrick. However, he said, they’ve wrongly become the target of partisan attacks, and in today’s polarized climate, they may soon face extinction.
He argues against this politicization in a new book, The Conservative Case for Class Actions . The book blends theoretical and empirical research to examine partisan arguments against class actions, and then proposes statutory tweaks that could address legitimate criticisms while preserving these suits as a recourse for large groups who have been wronged.
