Symposium at Penn State

I am reproducing here an e-mail announcement from ADR Prof Nancy Welsh that came across the ADR listserv earlier today:

Dear Colleagues:  

On Friday, March 26, 2010, Penn State will hold a symposium addressing the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Ashcroft v. Iqbal.  There will be three panels: 

*     One panel will address Iqbal‘s implications for the role of the courts and judges in providing American society with both the opportunity for redress of harms and a common law-based approach to the development of law. 

*     A second panel will explore the majority’s reference to purposeful discrimination and what it signals about contemporary understandings of race in America. 

*     The third panel will examine Iqbal‘s implications for Section 1983, including the decision’s potential impact on supervisory liability, qualified immunity and the behavior of agency officials operating under adverse conditions. 

At this point, presenters include Jeff Rachlinski (Cornell), Natsu Saito (Georgia State), Mark Brown (Capital), and several members of Penn State’s faculty: Victor Romero, Kit Kinports, Gary Gildin, Shoba Wadhia, Ray Campbell, and myself.  The slate of presenters is likely to expand.  Papers will be published in a symposium issue of the Penn State Law Review.  The symposium will be held at Penn State’s Carlisle, Pennsylvania facility.  Students, faculty and guests in the University Park facility also will be able to participate (and engage in one-on-one sidebar discussions) through the pervasive and advanced system of videoconferencing that links both locations in our unitary law school operation. 

It may not be obvious why this announcement should be posted to the dispute resolution listserv.  I fear that the pleading regime being implemented through Iqbal—and particularly its application to the claims of civil rights and other traditionally-disfavored plaintiffs—will reduce the incentives that currently motivate powerful and often institutional defendants to negotiate, mediate or even communicate with less-powerful individual plaintiffs.  That will be the subject of my paper for this symposium. 

I would welcome your attendance and participation.

Nancy

Nancy A. Welsh

Professor of Law

Dickinson School of Law

Penn State University

nxw10@psu.edu

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