Symposium on "Against Settlement"

The Fordham Law Review presents a one-day symposium, "Against Settlement: Twenty-Five Years Later," looking back at Owen Fiss's classic argument in favor of adjudication -- Against Settlement, 93 Yale L.J. 1073 (1984) -- from the perspective of 2009.  For those of us who believe that mass tort litigation can and often should be resolved by settlement rather than adjudication, the Fiss argument presents a serious challenge.  If mass tort settlements create a form of governance, should we be concerned that the governance is delivered by negotiating parties and their lawyers rather than by a public official?

The symposium speakers include many notables from the fields of ADR, complex litigation, and public interest litigation:  John Bronsteen, Amy Cohen, Kenneth Feinberg, Owen Fiss, Samuel Issacharoff, Pamela Karlan, Michael Moffitt, Jackie Nolan-Haley, Susan Sturm, and the Hon. Jack Weinstein.  The symposium, which is free and open to the public, will take place on Friday, April 3, 2009 at Fordham Law School in New York City.  I'm looking forward to it.

HME