Arthur R. Miller honored with daylong symposium at University of Oregon

Arthur R. Miller (center) pictured with Ibrahim Gassama, Michael Moffitt, Richard Hildreth, Arthur Miller, James Mooeny, Jennifer Reynolds, and Merle Weiner (L to R)A daylong symposium at the University of Oregon (UO) on April 13 honored the illustrious and varied career of University Professor Arthur R. Miller. UO Interim President Robert Berdahl also awarded Miller UO’s Presidential Medal. These were the latest in a series of recent events and accolades to honor Miller, a legendary scholar, practitioner, and media figure, who is now in his 50th year as a law professor. (See related readings, below.)

Titled “Miller’s Courts: Media, Rules, Policy, and the Future of Access to Justice,” the UO symposium provided "a forum for a comprehensive inquiry into questions of access to justice in civil law,” according to a UO announcement. It gave “special emphasis [to] the areas within which Miller has worked throughout his career: rulemaking, class actions, media and the law, technology and privacy, legal pedagogy, and procedural policy." Panelists engaged in a roundtable discussion of current and future trends relating to access to the civil courts, many of which, the UO announcement stated, "will be particularly relevant to Oregon’s legal and political landscape.”

While Miller was far from his NYU Law home, he did not lack for familiar faces. UO Law boasts an extraordinary concentration of Miller’s academic progeny: Six of the school’s 37 full-time faculty, including the current dean, Michael Moffitt, had Miller as a professor (they are pictured here). And the symposium featured roughly two dozen speakers and panelists—academics, practitioners, jurists, and journalists—who have worked with Miller over the course of his long career.

The symposium was sponsored by the Oregon Law Review and UO’s School of Law and School of Journalism and Communication.

Posted April 14, 2012