"The Impact of Pop Culture on the Civil Justice System"-Sixth Annual Clifford Symposium on Tort Law and Social Policy

It seems that just about everywhere one looks there are stories being told about civil litigation. The subject has been a favorite of television shows ranging from L.A. Law to Ally McBeal and The Practice. It has been a regular theme for moviemakers who have produced such films as The Verdict, The Sweet Hereafter, Class Action, and The Fortune Cookie. It has been both the superstar novelist's delight in such volumes as The Rainmaker and grist for the mill of brilliant non-fiction works like A Civil Action. It has even been a source of jokes and urban legends.

Virtually all of these narratives seem to be striving to tell us something about American law and, through it, about America at the beginning of a new century. The messages being sent deserve careful scrutiny because they profoundly affect the attitudes of both litigants and jurors. They are also helping to delineate the terms of our society's debate about the future of our justice system.

Among the aims of the Symposium will be to explore why civil litigation has become so deeply embedded in our popular culture and what our courtroom stories tell us about how we feel about our courts. 

Conference Faculty

Jeffrey Abramson, Brandeis University
Susan Bandes, DePaul University College of Law
Rosemary Coombe, University of Toronto
Stephen Daniels and Joanne Martin, American Bar Foundation
Patricia Ewick, Clark University
Gary Fine, Northwestern University
Lawrence Friedman, Stanford Law School
Marc Galanter, University of Wisconsin Law School
Stephan Landsman, Clifford Professor of Tort Law and Social Policy, DePaul University College of Law
Rob MacCoun, University of California, Berkeley
Austin Sarat, Amherst College
Susan Silbey, Wellesley College
Richard Weisberg, Yeshiva University School of Law
Mimi Wesson, University of Colorado School of Law 

 
The Clifford Tort Law and Social Policy Symposium
In 1994, Robert A. Clifford endowed the country's first Chair in Tort Law and Social Policy. The endowment supports faculty research and teaching as well as sponsoring an annual seminar on timely issues related to the law of torts and how it impacts society.

DePaul University College of Law
The symposium is free and open to the public upon registration. To register, please contact Susan Alico at 312-362-6229. The seminar will be held at the DePaul University, DePaul Center, 1 East Jackson Blvd., 8th Floor Conference Center, Chicago, Illinois