Events

International Access to Justice Forum - Sep 26-27, 2025

The 2025 International Access to Justice Forum was hosted by New York University and Fordham Law Schools. Access to justice is essential to the enforcement and protection of rights for vulnerable individuals and communities across the globe. It is a core prerequisite to achieving equal justice under law. Despite its primary importance, in many ways, it is the exception rather than the norm. All too often, individuals face insurmountable barriers to asserting rights through legal systems. 

We brought together almost 300 members of the access to justice community from more than 20 countries including Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Chile, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras, India, Italy, Mali, Mexico, Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Paraguay, Poland, Portugal, United Kingdom, United States and Zimbabwe.

Over the two days, we saw robust discussion of exciting new research, theory, and policy developments and innovative programs in the global movement for civil justice. Topics included a broad range of work advancing access to justice through community empowerment and engagement, court reform, diversion programs, law schools, tech and AI, and through human rights and democracy efforts. There were also two plenary sessions consisting of moderated discussions with global access to justice leaders.

MDL in Motion: Evolving Practices, Emerging Leaders, and Reform - Sep 12, 2025

Co-hosted with the American Law Institute, our MDL in Motion conference dug deep into judicial decision-making, the evolving role of special masters, and the growing momentum for reform. Sessions included in-depth analysis of major case studies—such as the opioid litigation—and offer practical strategies for managing complex, high-stakes proceedings.

See more here.

Mass Actions: Bankruptcies, MDLs, Class Actions & Harrington v. Purdue - Jan 31, 2025

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.

See more here.

Antitrust & Competition Law Society Fireside Chat with Judge Cote - Nov 13, 2024 

The conversation focused on Judge Cote’s extensive experience adjudicating antitrust litigation, including Federal Trade Commission v. Vyera Pharmaceuticals, LLC and United States v. Apple, Inc.

See more here.

Third-Party Litigation Funding through a Transatlantic Lens - Nov 21, 2024

Co-hosted alongside the Center for Transnational Litigation, Arbitration, and Commercial Law, this event discussed the European Law Institute's Principles governing third party funding of litigation.

See the event recording here.

Recent Legislative Responses to Litigation Finance - Oct 28, 2024 

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. 

See more here.

Unlocking Antitrust: Updates on Merger Enforcement Panel - Nov 1, 2023

New York University School of Law's Antitrust & Competition Law Society (ACLS) and the Center on Civil Justice hosted a panel discussion addressing the proposed July 2023 revisions to the federal merger guidelines, the June 2023 notice of proposed rulemaking regarding changes to the Hart-Scott-Rodino filing process, and the relationship between these two incredibly recent antitrust developments. This event drew together leading experts across the antitrust bar from government and firm practice to consider the state and direction of US merger law and enforcement. 

See more here.

Supreme Court and Stealth Rulings - Oct 23, 2023

We co-hosted a book talk with BWLC on Steve Vladeck's The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic.

See more here.

Nationwide Injunctions - Oct 23, 2023

Nationwide injunctions are playing an increasing role in the American legal landscape. From the beginnings of the U.S. judiciary until the 1960s, nationwide injunctions were not a feature of our legal system. Individual federal judges imposed no injunctions barring conduct across the entire nation during that time. But this has changed. 55 nationwide injunctions were imposed by courts during the presidency of Donald Trump, and the practice continues under the current administration.

Are nationwide injunctions a problem? Should they be restricted? If so, how? Should the federal courts tackle the problem of judge-shopping by reexamining the distribution of cases in a judicial district that includes a division populated by a single judge?

See more here.

Technology and Housing Courts - Sep 18, 2023 

Sateesh Nori, a tenant's lawyer with 20 years legal services experience and author of Sheltered: Twenty Years in Housing Court, discussed the challenges and inhumanity of Housing Court in New York City, the crisis of eviction, and his thoughts on how to reshape the dynamic between landlords and tenants.  He reflected on the role of technology and the possibilities organizations like JustFix offer tenants through the creation of technology tools to empower tenants and fight housing displacement. The Honorable Jean T. Schneider, recently retired supervising judge for the New York City Housing Court of New York County led a dynamic and informative discussion. 

See more here.

The Future of AI & the Law: Risks, Opportunities and Challenges -  Sep 13, 2023

Breakthrough innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) are poised to change society, commerce and every profession. This conference examined how AI will affect the law and the legal profession. Leading experts, professors, scientists, regulators, and lawyers considered how AI will affect and shape our future. With generative AI, large language models becoming proto-artificial general intelligence, AI programming other AI, and more advances, we are entering a new AI era. 

How will this new era impact the legal profession? Can synthetic intelligence replace judges and  lawyers? How will social justice be served or shaped? Can the court system be augmented by AI? What new AI ethics or policies should we consider? 

See more here.

Emerging Trends in Third-Party Funding - Feb 3, 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.  

See more here.

Recent Developments in Arbitration - Nov 12, 2022

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.

See conference details here. Recent Developments in Arbitration. 

We also published a book which collects the articles that were the subject of the panels of that event.

Shifting Tide in State Court Civil Litigation - Sep 16, 2022

There has been a rapid shift in the caseload of state courts. Costs of litigation are increasing, time to disposition of litigation increasing, trials are decreasing, and it is increasingly difficult for plaintiffs to find representation to vindicate their rights in civil suits. However, an even larger shift has occurred with a dramatic increase in “assembly line plaintiffs” taking over state court dockets for debt collections, evictions, and foreclosure, leaving more defendants unrepresented than plaintiffs. How should our state courts respond to these changes?

See more here.

Honoring Hon. Jack B. Weinstein - Jul 14, 2021
The Center on Civil Justice hosted a two-panel event in commemoration of the life of Judge Jack Weinstein, a giant of the federal judiciary for over fifty years.

See more here.

Antitrust Panel Series in association with Cravath, Swaine & Moore - Mar 10, Mar 24, Apr 7, Apr 21, 2021

In this panel series, experts discussed how companies use market power to exert unprecedented control in the 21st century.

See more here.

COVID & the Courts - Jan 11, 2021

The COVID crisis has dramatically altered the way courts conduct business, but any judge will tell you, with a sense of pride, that the courts never closed. How have courts – an institution notoriously slow to change – adapted to provide access to justice throughout a pandemic?

See more here.

Firearms Litigation: Liability, Regulation, and the Constitution - Dec 1, 2020

Firearms litigation poses some of the most novel questions being litigated in our courts, spanning constitutional, statutory, and policy questions.  This conference helped the legal community and policymakers think through some of these questions and create a framework to resolve them responsibly.

See more here.

MDLs & Class Actions: A Discussion with Chris Seeger and Elizabeth Burch - Oct 20, 2020

Chris Seeger has been lead Plaintiff's counsel in many of the nation's most significant multidistrict litigations, including the NFL case, the Vioxx case, and others. Elizabeth Burch is the Fuller E. Callaway Chair of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law and author of the 2019 book, "Mass Tort Deals: Backroom Bargaining in Multidistrict Litigation." The event was moderated by Hon. John Koeltl.

See more here.

Dispute Financing: COVID-19 & Other Recent Developments - Jun 4, 2020

As in-person events are canceled, the need to keep the dispute financing industry up-to-date on developments has not disappeared. The Center on Civil Justice, creators of the Dispute Financing Library, hosted an online, virtual conference discussing how the industry is shifting, both in the lead-up to the spread of COVID-19 and during the era of shelter-in-place.

See more here.

Artificial Intelligence: Educating the Legal Profession - Nov 22, 2019

Artificial Intelligence is already appearing in our courts and law offices.  Like any tool, automated decision systems require a degree of competence to be used responsibly. As the legal profession increasingly interacts with and relies on artificial intelligence, it becomes increasingly important that members of the profession understand it.

At this conference, we unveiled two different ways to provide an introductory level of education on some of the key issues, one focusing on technical competence and statistical literacy and the other focusing on key ethical issues. Last, we hosted a discussion dedicated to the important issue of ensuring that our judiciary understands the automated decisions systems that are already appearing in both civil and criminal cases.

See more here.

The Conservative Case for Class Actions (Brian T. Fitzpatrick Book Talk) - Nov 11, 2019

In The Conservative Case for Class Actions, Professor Fitzpatrick argues that all of us, conservatives and libertarians included, believe that markets need at least some policing to thrive, from laws that enforce contracts, to laws that prevent companies from committing fraud, to laws that prohibit price fixing. But he shows there are only two ways to do this policing: 1) private lawsuits filed by private citizens and their lawyers or 2) more government. He argues that, for the same reasons conservatives prefer other private sector solutions to problems, they should prefer private enforcement of the law as well. 

At the Center, we hosted Professor Fitzpatrick to talk about his book.

The Future of Dispute Financing: Pricing, Profits, and Policy - Oct 18, 2019

The Center on Civil Justice launched its Dispute Financing Library, a free, neutral repository of documents relating to the third-party litigation funding industry. It is online at www.DisputeFinancingLibrary.org. To celebrate the Library's launch, the Center hosted a luncheon and conference on the present and future of the litigation funding industry, looking at the state of the market and potential ethical concerns, with a keynote by Richard Painter.

See more here.

The Opioid Epidemic - Sep 26, 2019

The United States is currently struggling with one of its worst-ever drug crises. Every week, over nine hundred people die from opioid-related overdoses. Moreover, millions of Americans suffer from opioid addictions. Besides the risks it poses to public health, the crisis constitutes a threat to national security and a drag on the economy. Substantial evidence suggests that opioid marketing largely contributed to the crisis. 

We presented conference on "the Opioid Epidemic," co-hosted by the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU Law, the Center on Civil Justice at NYU Law, and the NYU Journal of Law & Business. This conference, featuring two panels and a keynote speech, focused on litigation surrounding the opioid epidemic as well as regulation and reform issues related to the crisis. Panelists discussed the lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies, different defense strategies and the most effective way to structure settlement agreements, the strengths and weaknesses of current regulation, and different reform options in order to effectively address this major health and social crisis. The keynote speech was delivered by the Honorable Diane Wood (Chief United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit).

See more here.

Multidistrict Litigation Conference - Oct 12-13, 2018

At this conference we commemorated the 50th anniversary of the 1968 Multidistrict Litigation Statute. This conference was co-hosted by the Center on Civil Justice at NYU Law School and the Liman and Solomon Centers at Yale Law School.

See more here.

Artificial Intelligence in a Democratic Society - Nov 30 - Dec 1, 2017

We are witnessing the rise of artificial intelligence in every aspect of our society and its institutions. A mix of increasing technological capabilities is now coupled with growing recognition that the world needs a set of norms for governing AI. From warfare to welfare, and from the boardroom to the courtroom, intelligent machines make decisions that affect the life, liberty, wellbeing and right to opportunity of human beings. The summit was aimed at identifying frameworks that could support a set of actionable ethical principles, policy frameworks, new codes of conduct, and regulations, to help society benefit from technological advancements, while mitigating their risks.

See more here.

The Class Action Effect Colloquium - May 19, 2017

Our Center co-hosted a conference with the University of Montreal in 2017 called “The Class Action Effect.” 

See more here, or check out the publication Class Action Effect Conference Book. 

Beyond Elite Law: Access to Civil Justice in America - Apr 28-29, 2016

NYU Law’s Institute of Judicial Administration and Center on Civil Justice co-sponsored a two-day conference on April 28-29 springing from Beyond Elite Law: Access to Civil Justice in America, a book co-edited by Dwight D. Opperman Professor of Law Samuel Estreicher. Academic experts, attorneys, and judges from across the country convened to discuss the plight of Americans unable to afford legal representation.

See conference videos here.

See press here.

Rule 23 and Class Actions Conference - Dec 2, 2016

In this conference, attendees reflected on Rule 23 — what it was meant to do; whether it has met its promise; if not, why not, and what can be done to remedy the situation; and what is in store for the rule going forward.

See more here.

Basics of Litigation Funding - Nov 20, 2015

Third-party litigation funding is gaining a foothold in the United States. A global phenomenon, litigation funding has taken secure root in the United Kingdom, Australia and Hong Kong. It is, however, relatively new in the United States, and for many here the practice is wrapped in mystery. As a result, the Center on Civil Justice at NYU Law examined the impact it may have on our justice system and what, if any, regulation might be necessary. The center does this as part of its mission to engage scholars, practitioners, judges, and others in examination of issues affecting the civil justice system. The objective is to consider how participants in the system can be more satisfactorily served, while preserving the values that have made it a pillar of our democracy.

See more here.

Right to Sue in Court - Mar 30, 2015

Forced arbitration clauses in contracts deprive Americans of their rights to sue in court, leading to unfair outcomes and a rigged system. We hosted a documentary screening and discussion for Lost in the Fine Print, a film that explores this issue. 

Is the Jury Trial Dying? - Apr 11, 2014

Jury trials in civil cases are part of our Bill of Rights, and the jury trial has always been thought of as a pillar of American democracy. In practice, however, it is increasingly rare. Why is this happening? What does the demise of the jury trial mean for our civil justice system? Does it change democratic citizenship? Can the trend be reversed? Should we try, or just allow the jury trial become a relic of an earlier time? Our distinguished panel of trial and appellate lawyers and academic experts discussed these and other hotly debated questions.

See more here.

The Future of Class Action Litigation - Nov 7, 2014

Once consumer class actions were praised for increasing access to justice by compensating "small claims held by small people." They also served as a form of regulation. By overcoming the problematic economics of small-stakes individual litigation, they allowed for the private enforcement of the law. The Supreme Court once described these "negative value" suits as "the very core of the class action mechanism." Now, consumer class actions face serious criticism for failing to provide compensation to class members or to achieve effective market regulation. Perhaps as a result, it is harder to certify a consumer class action today than at any time since the adoption of modern Rule 23 in 1966.

Participants in our conference discussed a broad range of issues relating to recent developments in the law of consumer class actions. The conference also considered what the criticism of consumer class actions means for the future of class actions more generally. If "the very core" of class actions goes away, what will be left?

See more here.