Events

Upcoming Events

• MDL in Motion: Evolving Practices, Emerging Leaders, and Reform (September 12, 2025) 
• International Access to Justice Forum 2025 (September 26-27, 2025)

Past Events

• Mass Actions: Bankruptcies, MDLs, Class Actions & Harrington v. Purdue - On January 31, 2025, the Center on Civil Justice hosted a full-day conference discussing the future of American mass actions in the wake of the United States Supreme Court's bankruptcy decision in Harrington v. Purdue. Panelists debated the extent  of the impact of the Purdue case and the respective merits and disadvantages of the bankruptcy vs MDL system.  They brought first-hand experiences as individuals personally involved in litigating the Purdue MDL and bankruptcy cases.  They raised novel differences in how MDL and bankruptcy claims get valued, especially noting that large pools of low-value mass tort claimants have outsized influence in bankruptcies, where each claimant has a single vote, whether the claimant is an individual or a State.  The event concluded with Professor Arthur Miller, present for the founding of American mass actions, reflecting on how they have evolved.
• Third-Party Litigation Funding through a Transatlantic Lens
• Antitrust & Competition Law Society Fireside Chat with Judge Cote
• Recent Legislative Responses to Litigation Finance - The Center on Civil Justice's 2024 Fall conference featured presentations on active legislation and was widely attended both in-person and on Zoom.  The first panel consisted of a lively debate on the need for disclosure of commercial legal funding agreements and was featured in American Lawyer. The second panel discussed consumer legal funding. New York Assemblymember William Magnarelli presented his legislation on the subject, and experts on both sides of the debate discussed it. The final panel was a comparative discussion of European efforts to regulate the industry, featuring Kai Zenner, who helped draft the European Parliament resolution that opened the dialogue.  Recordings of the event are available here.
• Unlocking Antitrust: Updates in Merger Enforcement
• Nationwide Injunctions
• Stephen Vladeck Book Talk: The Shadow Docket
• Stephen B. Bright and James Kwak Book Talk: Fear of Too much Justice
• Sateesh Nori Book Talk: Sheltered: Twenty Years in Housing Court
• The Future of AI & the Law: Risks, Opportunities and Challenges
• Emerging Trends in Third Party Funding - In February 2023, members of the Center's Dispute Financing Library Advisory Board organized a full-day conference on cutting-edge issues in third-party funding.  Among the highlights was a spirited conversation on law firm ownership, featuring a vigorous debate between members of the New York State Bar Association and practitioners.  A separate panel provided a practical, behind-the-scenes peek into the process of drafting a contract to fund litigation.  The full conference was recorded and is available here.
• Recent Developments in Arbitration - CCJ Board of Advisers member Hon. Lee Rosenthal, Chief Judge of the Southern District of Texas conceived of this conference on the changing landscape in arbitration.  The Center worked with George Bermann of the Center for International Commercial & Investment Arbitration at Columbia Law School and Franco Ferrari and Linda Silberman of the Center for Transnational Litigation, Arbitration, and Commercial Law at NYU School of Law to organize the event.  The conference featured five panels discussing various pressing issues in arbitration, including the lead-off panel on gateway issues moderated by Judge Rosenthal; a panel discussing due process in arbitration; a panel discussing developments in international arbitration; panel on the cutting-edge aspects of consumer and employment mass arbitration, featuring a presentation by Maria Glover, author of the leading paper on the subject; and a panel on third-party arbitration funding.
• Shifting Tide in State Court Civil Litigation - State court dockets have increasingly become home to assembly-line plaintiffs filing debt collection, eviction, or foreclosure actions against unrepresented defendants. At this conference, we convened the leading scholars who have been calling for attention to this developing issue, together with judges and practitioners who are working on solutions. Among our presenters were Professor Colleen Shanahan, who has written extensively about developments in state courts, as well as Prof. Daniel Wilf-Townsend, who authored the insightful "Assembly Line Plaintiffs" in the Harvard Law Review. The conference also included a discussion of current efforts by various state courts in aid of those who find themselves in state court without legal representation. A highlight of the conference was a lunchtime keynote by Hon. Bridget McCormack, then-Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court.
• Honoring Hon. Jack B. Weinstein
• Antitrust Panel Series in association with Cravath, Swaine & Moore
• COVID & the Courts
• Firearms Litigation: Liability, Regulation, and the Constitution
• MDLs & Class Actions: A Discussion with Chris Seeger and Elizabeth Burch
• Dispute Financing: COVID-19 & Other Recent Developments 
• Brian T. Fitzpatrick Book Talk: The Conservative Case for Class Actions
• Artificial Intelligence: Educating the Legal Profession
• The Future of Dispute Finance: Pricing, Profits, and Policy
• The Opioid Epidemic
• Artificial Intelligence in a Democratic Society
• MDL @ 50
• Class Action Effect (with University of Montreal)
• Rule 23 @ 50
• Litigation Funding
• Lost in the Fine Print
• Consumer Class Actions
• Is the Jury Trial Dying