Call for Papers: Vanderbilt Law School Civil Justice Scholarship Workshop

VANDERBILT LAW SCHOOL • BRANSTETTER LITIGATION & DISPUTE RESOLUTION PROGRAM CALL FOR PAPERS

Vanderbilt Law School and the Cecil D. Branstetter Litigation & Dispute Resolution Program announce the 2012 New Voices in Civil Justice Scholarship Workshop to be held at Vanderbilt on April 20, 2012, and invite submissions for the workshop.

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.

Submission requirements.

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 decisionmaking, 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, 2011. 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.
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