SYMPOSIA
2010 Symposium: Health Law and The Elderly
Co-chairs: Professors Thaddeus Pope and John Culhane
Each year, the Law School, in cooperation with the Law Review, sponsors symposia that is held at the Law School. This event brings together experts to speak on various facets of timely legal issues. The expert presentations inspire both solicited and unsolicited articles for publication in a subsequent Law Review Volume. Continuing Legal Education (CLE) credits are available for attending such symposia, and the regional Continuing Legal Education organizations work with the Law School to promote this event. Please click the links above for information on this year’s event.
PREVIOUS SYMPOSIA
2009 Symposium: The Child Witness
Symposium Co-Chairs: Professors John Nivala and Jules Epstein
Overview
Law, psychology, advocacy and ethics are all engaged, and have particular applications and impacts, when the witness at a trial is a child. This symposium will address the constellation of issues surrounding child witness testimony – the psychology of children and the inter-related issues of competence and taint; issues of child interviewing and the courtroom presentation of child witness testimony; the child witness, hearsay, and the Confrontaiton guarantee; and ethical issues arising when the witness is a child. The approach will be multi-disciplinary, appropriate for lawyers, para-legals, child advocates, and court personnel.
2008 Symposium: Living with Climate Change:
Legal Challenges in a Warmer World
Symposium Chair: Professor Kenneth Kristl
Overview
The scientific consensus is clear: climate change is a serious and immediate problem. There is growing acknowledgement that climate change calls for an active and considered response from many sectors of society. Yet even as we develop strategies to reduce limate change and its impact, there can be no avoiding the fact that temperatures will rise. Living with Climate Change: Legal Challenges in a Warmer World will focus on how the law can both mitigate climate change and adapt to the consequences of the warmer world it will bring. The Symposium will take a multifaceted approach, addressing the impacts of climate change on a wide array of legal areas and examining how ideas and approaches drawn from different areas of the law can be employed to combat the problem.
2007 Symposium: Cross-examination:
The Great (?) Engine for Truth Determination
Symposium Chairs: Professors Jules Epstein and John Nivala
Overview
Wigmore (and others before and since) have hailed cross examination as the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth. But, one can question that proposition even though it continues to pervade national jurisprudence. This symposium will examine cross examination—its historic roots, its perceived effectiveness and demonstrated inadequacies, and its role in the electronic age.