Nancy Welsh of Penn State has sent out a reminder email, soliciting papers for their upcoming conference focusing on Iqbal.  See below for details.  There is SO much to be said about that case, both from an ADR and an CivPro perspective.  I hope that the folks at Penn State will make the proceedings available in some format.

Michael Moffitt

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Call for Papers
Symposium: Reflections on Iqbal—Discerning Its Rule, Grappling With Its Implications
Penn State Law Review
Penn State University, Dickinson School of Law

On Friday, March 26, 2010, the Penn State Law Review will hold a symposium addressing the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Ashcroft v. Iqbal.  The symposium is entitled Reflections on Iqbal—Discerning Its Rule, Grappling With Its Implications and will feature panels addressing the following topics:

·         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.

·         The majority’s reference to purposeful discrimination and what it signals about contemporary understandings of race in America.

·         Iqbal’s implications for constitutional tort litigation, including the decision’s potential impact on supervisory liability, qualified immunity, and the behavior of agency officials operating under adverse conditions.

Presenters currently include: Hon. Anthony Scirica (Chief Judge, Third Circuit), Hon. D. Brooks Smith (Third Circuit), Mark Brown (Capital), Ray Campbell (Penn State), Gary Gildin (Penn State), Ramzi Kassem (CUNY), Kit Kinports (Penn State), Jim Pfander (Northwestern), Jeff Rachlinski (Cornell), Victor Romero (Penn State), Natsu Saito (Georgia State), Jean Sternlight (UNLV), Shoba Wadhia (Penn State), and Nancy Welsh (Penn State).  Presented papers will be published in a Symposium Issue of the Penn State Law Review.  Brief abstracts of the papers will be posted on the Law Review’s online companion, Penn Statim, by December 16, 2009.

The Penn State Law Review issues this Call for Papers for submissions regarding Iqbal and particularly invites submissions regarding the topics to be covered at the Iqbal symposium and responding to the abstracts that will be posted on Penn Statim.  Submissions will be accepted, however, that are grounded in other areas of law relevant to understanding the reasoning in Iqbal (e.g., security, employment, antitrust, etc.), as well as other academic disciplines.  Papers submitted in response to this Call should be of essay length and type and should be no longer than 5,000 words, including footnotes.  Through its online companion, the Penn State Law Review hopes to encourage and host a scholarly online dialogue regarding Iqbal and its implications.  Therefore, after conducting an editorial review process, the Penn Statim will select and begin posting papers on December 17, 2009, with selections and postings to continue on an ongoing basis.  At least one of the papers submitted in response to this Call will be selected for hard-copy publication in the Summer Issue of the Penn State Law Review.  The author of any paper selected for such hard-copy publication will be invited (but not required) to expand upon his or her essay-length piece.

The deadline for submissions in response to this Call is Friday, April 16, 2010.  All submissions must be sent to iqbalsymposium@law.psu.edu.  All submissions must be in English and comply with Bluebook formatting rules.  Penn Statim is available at http://www.pennstatelawreview.org/