Faculty Events Calendar: Colloquia, Workshops, Lectures and Conferences

Consistent with its longstanding commitment to fostering a communal environment of intellectual engagement, the Law School is pleased to host countless colloquia, conferences, and guest lectures throughout the school year. Many of these events are specially scheduled, one-time affairs. In addition, the school runs the following regularly scheduled series, which cover a range of formats and scholarly areas.

Events for Fall 2019

View upcoming events

August 30, 2019 Friday

TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)
2:45pm - 4:45pm

Moderator:

SCOTUS - Committee of the Whole

Speakers:

Joseph Fishkin Rucho v. Common Cause

Mechele Dickerson Lamps Plus Inc. v. Varela

Jeffrey Abramson Flowers v. Mississippi

Elizabeth Sepper American Legion v. American Humanist Association

September 5, 2019 Thursday

TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)
11:30am - 1:00pm

Moderator:

Faculty Colloquium - Andrew Koppelman // Northwestern

Speaker:

The Corruption of Libertarianism: How a Philosophy of Freedom was Betrayed by Delusion and Greed

September 9, 2019 Monday

TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)
11:30am - 1:00pm

Moderator:

Drawing Board Luncheon - Susan C. Morse, Robots as Lawmakers, Robots as Lawbreakers (featuring TurboTax)

Speaker:

Drawing Board Luncheon - Susan C. Morse, Robots as Lawmakers, Robots as Lawbreakers (featuring TurboTax)

September 10, 2019 Tuesday

JON 5.206 (Susman Academic Center, Bryan and Michelle Goolsby Conference Suite (5.206 / 5.207))
3:45pm - 5:45pm

Moderator:

Colloquium on Comparative Constitutional Law and Politics: Andrew Young (Texas Tech University)

Speaker:

Andrew Young is the director of graduate students and a research fellow at the Free Market Institute. He is also professor of economics in the Jerry S. Rawls College of Business Administration at Texas Tech University. He is a co-editor of the journal Contemporary Economic Policy and an associate editor for the Southern Economic Journal. He earned his B.A. in economics from the College of the Holy Cross and his Ph.D. in economics from Emory University. Prior to joining Texas Tech University, he taught economics at West Virginia University, University of Mississippi and Emory University. Prof. Young is the author of more than 60 scholarly articles and book chapters. His primary fields of research are constitutional political economy, institutional economics, and economic development. His recent research focuses on the political economy of late antiquity and medieval Europe.

September 12, 2019 Thursday

TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)
11:30am - 1:00pm

Moderator:

Faculty Colloquium - Stephen Vladeck // UT Law

Speaker:

September 13, 2019 Friday

CCJ 2.306 (Eidman Courtroom)
CCJ 2.300 (Jamail Pavilion)
6:30pm - 9:00pm

Moderator:

Shakespeare and the Law -- Twelfth Night

Free Admission. Reception followed by panel on Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" Panel members include David Kornhaber, Coordinator, AFTLS; David Kornhaber, Coordinator, AFTLS; Professors Angela Littwin, UT Law; James Loehlin, Director, Shakespeare at Winedale, and the Spirit of Shakespeare's players.

September 19, 2019 Thursday

TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)
11:30am - 1:00pm

Moderator:

September 19, 2019 Thursday

JON 5.257
3:45pm - 5:45pm

Moderators:

LAW & PHILOSOPHY WORKSHOP-LESLIE KENDRICK

Speaker:

The Law and Philosophy Seminar Workshop surveys different topics in legal philosophy and constitutional theory. Organized around a series of workshops, each features a different leading scholar who presents and discusses their own work with UT law and philosophy faculty and the students in the seminar.

September 23, 2019 Monday

JON 5.257
3:45pm - 5:30pm

Moderator:

Law and Economic Seminar - Weijia Rao // University of Chicago

Speaker:

September 24, 2019 Tuesday

JON 5.206 (Susman Academic Center, Bryan and Michelle Goolsby Conference Suite (5.206 / 5.207))
3:45pm - 5:45pm

Moderator:

Colloquium on Comparative Constitutional Law and Politics: Justin Collings (Brigham Young University)

Speaker:

Justin Collings is Professor of Law at the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University where he teaches constitutional law and torts. He is the author of Democracy’s Guardians: A History of the German Federal Constitutional Court, 1951-2001 (Oxford University Press, 2015) and Scales of Memory: Constitutional Justice and the Burdens of the Past (forthcoming, Oxford University Press, 2020). He holds doctorates in law and history from Yale and clerked for the Honorable Guido Calabresi on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

September 24, 2019 Tuesday

JON 6.206 (Susman Academic Center, The Judge William W. and Margaret R. Kilgarlin Chambers)
3:45pm - 5:45pm

Moderators:

Colloquium on Current Issues in Complex Litigation -- Teddy Rave (University of Houston)

Speaker:

"It's Good to Have the 'Haves' on Your Side: A Defense of Repeat Players in Multidistrict Litigation" (with Andrew D. Bradt) -- forthcoming Georgetown L. J. 2019

ABSTRACT

Repeat players in multidistrict litigation (MDL) get a bad rap. When thousands of cases from all over the country are consolidated for pretrial proceedings, it's no wonder that the judge assigned to manage the litigation picks experienced lawyers to lead the effort. But critics argue that the small group of elite lawyers who show up again and again in leadership positions on the plaintiffs’ side of MDLs can collude with each other and with repeat players on the defense side to restrict competition and shape the rules of the game to their advantage—all to the detriment of the one-shotter clients that they represent. Those criticisms have gotten louder as MDL has grown to make up more than one-third of the federal civil docket and encompass some of the nation’s largest controversies, such as the opioid epidemic, the BP oil spill, the NFL concussion litigation, and many defective product cases. In this Article, we challenge this narrative, drawing on Marc Galanter’s seminal explanation for why the haves” come out ahead in litigation. Although the risks they pose are real, we argue that repeat players add significant value when they represent one-shotter plaintiffs, and that value may be worth running the risks. We show how MDL’s unique structure—its formal commitment to individualism but functional operation as a tight aggregation—allows repeatplayer plaintiffs’ lawyers to “play for rules” more effectively than either the class action or traditional one-on-one litigation. And with potential reforms to MDL procedure on the agendas of both the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules and Congress, we urge policymakers and scholars not to lose sight of the significant benefits to plaintiffs of having repeat players on their side.

September 30, 2019 Monday

JON 5.257
3:45pm - 5:30pm

Moderator:

October 1, 2019 Tuesday

JON 5.206 (Susman Academic Center, Bryan and Michelle Goolsby Conference Suite (5.206 / 5.207))
3:45pm - 5:45pm

Moderator:

Colloquium on Comparative Constitutional Law and Politics: Julie Suk (The City University of New York)

Speaker:

Julie Chi-hye Suk is dean for master’s programs and professor of Sociology, Political Science, and Liberal Studies at the City University of New York (CUNY) – The Graduate Center. She is a scholar of comparative law and society, with a focus on women in comparative constitutional law. Her scholarship brings a global constitutional perspective to the new efforts to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment in the United States. Her book on these themes, We the Women: The Forgotten Mothers of the Equal Rights Amendment, will be published in 2020.

Professor Suk has authored dozens of scholarly articles and book chapters in law reviews and peer-reviewed journals. Prior to joining The Graduate Center, Dr. Suk was a law professor for 13 years at Cardozo Law School in New York, with visiting professorships at the law schools of Harvard, Columbia, University of Chicago, and UCLA. She has lectured widely in the United States and Europe, and has been a visiting fellow at the European University Institute in Florence and LUISS-Guido Carli in Rome. In addition to master’s and doctoral degrees in politics from Oxford University, she holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and an A.B. in English and French Literature from Harvard University.

She has served as the section chair of the Association of American Law Schools’ sections on Employment Discrimination, Comparative Law, and European Law. She is on the Board of the National Center for Access to Justice.

October 3, 2019 Thursday

TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)
11:30am - 1:00pm

Moderator:

Faculty Colloquium - Mark Gergen // Berkeley

Speaker:

Equitable Wrongs in Modern American Law

October 8, 2019 Tuesday

JON 6.206 (Susman Academic Center, The Judge William W. and Margaret R. Kilgarlin Chambers)
3:45pm - 5:45pm

Moderators:

Colloquium on Current Issues in Complex Litigation -- Sean Farhang (Berkeley)

Speaker:

"Politics, Identity, and Class Certification on the U.S. Courts of Appeals" (with Stephen B. Burbank)

ABSTRACT

This article draws on novel data and presents the results of the first empirical analysis of how potentially salient characteristics of Court of Appeals judges influence precedential lawmaking on class certification under Rule 23. We find that the partisan composition of the panel (measured by the party of the appointing president) has a very strong association with certification outcomes, with all-Democratic panels having more than double the certification rate of all-Republican panels in precedential cases. We also find that the presence of one African American on a panel, and the presence of two females (but not one), is associated with pro-certification outcomes. Contrary to conventional wisdom in the scholarship on diversity on the bench, such diversity may be consequential to lawmaking beyond policy areas conventionally thought to be of particular concern to women and racial minorities.

Class action doctrine is a form of trans-substantive procedural law that traverses many policy areas. The effects of gender and racial diversity on the bench, through making more procertification law, radiate widely across the legal landscape, influencing implementation of consumer, securities, labor and employment, antitrust, prisoner’s rights, public benefits, and many other areas of law. The results highlight how the consequences of diversity extend beyond conceptions of “women’s issues” or “minority issues.” The results also suggest the importance of exploring the effects of diversity on trans-substantive procedural law more generally.

October 10, 2019 Thursday

TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)
11:30am - 1:00pm

Moderator:

Faculty Colloquium - Michael Sturley // University of Texas

Speaker:

Making Sense of Batterton

October 10, 2019 Thursday

JON 5.257
3:45pm - 5:45pm

Moderators:

LAW & PHILOSOPHY WORKSHOP - LIAM MURPHY

Speaker:

The Law and Philosophy Seminar Workshop surveys different topics in legal philosophy and constitutional theory. Organized around a series of workshops, each features a different leading scholar who presents and discusses their own work with UT law and philosophy faculty and the students in the seminar.

October 14, 2019 Monday

TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)
11:30am - 1:00pm

Moderator:

Drawing Board Luncheon - Abigail Moncrieff

Speaker:

Drawing Board Luncheon - Abigail Moncrieff

October 14, 2019 Monday

TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)
4:00pm - 6:00pm

Colloquium on Human Rights and Global Inequality: Law, History, Politics

Human Rights and Global Inequality: Law, History, Politics

October 15, 2019 Tuesday

3:45pm - 5:45pm

Moderator:

Colloquium on Comparative Constitutional Law and Politics: Michael Pal (Ottawa University)

Speaker:

Michael Pal is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa and one of Canada’s leading experts on the law of democracy and comparative constitutional law. He has a J.D. and a doctorate from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, where he was a Trudeau Foundation Scholar, and an LL.M in Legal Theory from NYU. He is currently at work on a manuscript on the comparative constitutional politics of election commissions. He was the constitutional advisor for Ontario’s recent campaign finance reforms and is active advising election commissions and constitutional drafters in Asia and Africa.

October 17, 2019 Thursday

TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)
11:30am - 1:00pm

Moderator:

Faculty Colloquium - Andrea Roth // Berkeley

Speaker:

October 21, 2019 Monday

JON 5.257
3:45pm - 5:30pm

Moderator:

October 22, 2019 Tuesday

TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)
3:45pm - 5:45pm

Moderators:

Colloquium on Current Issues in Complex Litigation: Brian T. Fitzpatrick (Vanderbilt Law School)

Speaker:

Colloquium for the Current Issues in Complex Litigation course with guest speaker Brian Fitzpatrick.

October 24, 2019 Thursday

TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)
11:30am - 1:00pm

Moderator:

Faculty Colloquium - John Golden & Tom Lee

Speakers:

Public Rights and Non-Article III Adjudication

October 24, 2019 Thursday

JON 5.257
3:45pm - 5:45pm

Moderators:

LAW & PHILOSOPHY WORKSHOP - KEVIN TOH

Speaker:

The Law and Philosophy Seminar Workshop surveys different topics in legal philosophy and constitutional theory. Organized around a series of workshops, each features a different leading scholar who presents and discusses their own work with UT law and philosophy faculty and the students in the seminar.

October 24, 2019 Thursday

CCJ 2.300 (Jamail Pavilion)
CCJ 2.306 (Eidman Courtroom)
4:00pm - 8:00pm

Moderator:

Graduate Conference in Public Law Keynote

Speaker:

The Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin will hold the sixth annual Graduate Conference in Public Law on October 24-25, 2019. Reflecting the growing prominence of public law in political science, the conference will provide a forum to engage with common questions in the field.

The conference will consist of thematic panels, each featuring 4 papers and comments by a faculty discussant. Julie Novkov, Professor and Chair of Political Science and Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University at Albany, SUNY, will deliver the keynote address the evening of October 24 in the School of Law.

October 28, 2019 Monday

TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)
4:00pm - 6:00pm

Colloquium on Human Rights and Global Inequality: Law, History, Politics

Human Rights and Global Inequality: Law, History, Politics

October 29, 2019 Tuesday

TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)
8:00am - 9:00am

Moderator:

JAG Meeting with Brigadier General Susan Escallier

Speaker:

Breakfast with BG Susan Escallier.

October 31, 2019 Thursday

TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)
11:30am - 1:00pm

Moderator:

November 4, 2019 Monday

JON 5.257
3:45pm - 5:30pm

Moderator:

Law and Economic Seminar - Guiseppe Dari-Mattiacci // Columbia University

Speaker:

November 5, 2019 Tuesday

JON 5.206 (Susman Academic Center, Bryan and Michelle Goolsby Conference Suite (5.206 / 5.207))
3:45pm - 5:45pm

Moderator:

Colloquium on Comparative Constitutional Law and Politics: Yvonne Tew (Georgetown University)

Speaker:

Professor Yvonne Tew writes and teaches in the areas of constitutional law, comparative constitutional law, and religion and law. Prior to joining the Georgetown Law faculty, she taught at Columbia Law School as an Associate-in-Law and was a Hauser Global Research Fellow at the New York University School of Law. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge Scholar. Professor Tew received her first law degree from the University of Cambridge graduating with Double First Class Honors in 2007 and completed her Master of Laws (LL.M.) from Harvard Law School. Her scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in the Virginia Journal of International Law, Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, Washington International Law Journal, American Journal of Comparative Law, Cambridge Law Journal, and in several book collections published by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and Edward Elgar Publishing.

November 5, 2019 Tuesday

TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)
3:45pm - 5:45pm

Moderators:

November 7, 2019 Thursday

TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)
11:30am - 1:00pm

Moderator:

Faculty Colloquium - Talha Syed // Berkeley

Speaker:

RETHINKING JUSTICE IN EDUCATION: FROM EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY TO DISTRIBUTIVE EQUITY

November 7, 2019 Thursday

JON 5.257
3:45pm - 5:45pm

Moderators:

LAW & PHILOSOPHY WORKSHOP - SOPHIA REIBETANZ MOREAU

Speaker:

The Law and Philosophy Seminar Workshop surveys different topics in legal philosophy and constitutional theory. Organized around a series of workshops, each features a different leading scholar who presents and discusses their own work with UT law and philosophy faculty and the students in the seminar.

November 11, 2019 Monday

TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)
11:30am - 1:00pm

Moderator:

Drawing Board Luncheon - Abe Wickelgren, Contractual Conditions

Speaker:

Drawing Board Luncheon - Abe Wickelgren, Contractual Conditions (co-author Ian Ayres)

November 11, 2019 Monday

JON 5.257
3:45pm - 5:30pm

Moderator:

November 11, 2019 Monday

TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)
4:00pm - 6:00pm

Colloquium on Human Rights and Global Inequality: Law, History, Politics

Human Rights and Global Inequality: Law, History, Politics

November 12, 2019 Tuesday

JON 5.206 (Susman Academic Center, Bryan and Michelle Goolsby Conference Suite (5.206 / 5.207))
3:45pm - 5:45pm

Moderator:

Colloquium on Comparative Constitutional Law and Politics: David Landau (Florida State University)

Speaker:

Professor David Landau is the Mason Ladd Professor and Associate Dean for International Programs at Florida State University College of Law. He is the co-author, with Manuel Jose Cepeda Espinosa, of Colombian Constitutional Law, co-editor, with David Bilchitz, of The Evolution of the Separation of Powers, and co-editor with Hanna Lerner of Comparative Constitution-Making. He has published in various journals including the University of Chicago Law Review, the Iowa Law Review, and the Harvard Journal of International Law. Since 2012, he has been a founding editor of IConnect, the blog of the International Journal of Constitutional Law.

November 14, 2019 Thursday

TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)
11:30am - 1:00pm

Moderator:

November 19, 2019 Tuesday

JON 5.206 (Susman Academic Center, Bryan and Michelle Goolsby Conference Suite (5.206 / 5.207))
3:45pm - 5:45pm

Moderator:

Colloquium on Comparative Constitutional Law and Politics: Rivka Weill (Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya)

Speaker:

Professor Rivka Weill of the Harry Radzyner Law School, IDC, was a Visiting Law Professor at Cardozo Law School (2016-2017), David R. Greenbaum and Laureine Knight Greenbaum Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at University of Chicago Law School (Fall 2017) and Visiting Law Professor at Yale Law School (Spring 2018). In recent years, she received three times the IDC’s “Best Researcher in Law School” award (2012, 2015, 2017) as well as the IDC’s “Best Lecturer in Law School” award (2010). Her work focuses on constitutional law as well as administrative law with a focus on theoretical and comparative dimensions.

November 19, 2019 Tuesday

TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)
3:45pm - 5:45pm

Moderators:

November 21, 2019 Thursday

TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)
11:30am - 1:00pm

Moderators:

Faculty Colloquium - Jennifer Nou // University of Chicago

Speaker:

November 21, 2019 Thursday

JON 5.257
3:45pm - 5:45pm

Moderators:

LAW & PHILOSOPHY WORKSHOP - REBECCA STONE

Speaker:

The Law and Philosophy Seminar Workshop surveys different topics in legal philosophy and constitutional theory. Organized around a series of workshops, each features a different leading scholar who presents and discusses their own work with UT law and philosophy faculty and the students in the seminar.

November 25, 2019 Monday

TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)
4:00pm - 6:00pm

Colloquium on Human Rights and Global Inequality: Law, History, Politics

Human Rights and Global Inequality: Law, History, Politics

December 2, 2019 Monday

JON 5.257
3:45pm - 5:30pm

Moderator:

Law and Economic Seminar - Cheri Metcalf // Queens University

Speaker:

December 3, 2019 Tuesday

TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)
3:45pm - 5:45pm

Moderators:

Colloquium on Current Issues in Complex Litigation -- Richard J. Arsenault; Elizabeth J. Cabraser; James F. Murdica

Speakers:

.

December 5, 2019 Thursday

JON 5.257
3:45pm - 5:45pm

Moderators:

LAW & PHILOSOPHY WORKSHOP - MARK GREENBERG

Speaker:

The Law and Philosophy Seminar Workshop surveys different topics in legal philosophy and constitutional theory. Organized around a series of workshops, each features a different leading scholar who presents and discusses their own work with UT law and philosophy faculty and the students in the seminar.

December 6, 2019 Friday

TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)
8:00am - 6:00pm

Moderator:

December 6, 2019 Friday

CCJ 2.300 (Jamail Pavilion)
1:00pm - 2:15pm

Moderator:

December 7, 2019 Saturday

TNH 2.111 (Sheffield-Massey Room)
8:00am - 6:00pm

Moderator:

December 9, 2019 Monday

JON 5.257
3:45pm - 5:30pm

Moderator:

Law and Economic Seminar - Kathy Spier // Harvard Law School

Speaker: