Center for Interdisciplinary Law and Policy Studies

Center Conferences

Below are conferences either hosted or co-hosted by the Center for Interdisciplinary Law and Policy Studies.

Justice for Children Project: Juvenile Law Seminar

April 3-4, 2008
Moritz College of Law, Barrister Club, Columbus, OH
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Juvenile law experts will discuss cutting edge issues pertaining todelinquency, abuse, neglect, dependency, and termination of parental rights cases at a two-day symposium on April 3 and 4. The symposium,sponsored and hosted by The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law's Justice for Children Project, will examine several juvenile law topics, such as Senate Bill 10 and the Adam Walsh Act; Blakely and Foster issues in serious youthful offender proceedings; the use of testimonial evidence pursuant to Crawford; how to try an abuse and neglect case; case law and legislation updates; and recent developments in neurological and socioscientific research.

CLE Credit: This conference has been approved by the Supreme Court of Ohio Commission on Continuing Legal Education for 11 total CLE hours, with 0 hours of ethics, 0 hours of professionalism, and 0 hours of substance abuse instruction. The Office of the Ohio Public Defender has provided a limited number of scholarships for public defenders and pro bono counsel.

Project on Law and Development: International Conference on Online Consultation and Public Policymaking: Democracy, Identity, and New Media

March 14-15, 2008
Moritz College of Law, Barrister Club, Columbus, OH
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The conference will feature researchers from Australia, England, France, Israel, Italy, Korea and Slovenia, in addition to the United States, addressing a variety of e-democracy issues from a diverse interdisciplinary background and both theoretical and applied research. This is an active workshop in which members of the International Working Group on Online Consultation and Public Policy Making will both present and discuss the principal papers. Audience members, including students, are welcome, but reservations to attend must be made in advance.

Legislation Clinic Conference: The Functioning of Separation of Powers in State Government

March 13, 2008
Vern Riffe Center, 77 South High Street, Columbus, OH
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The Legislation Clinic, in conjunction with the Moritz College of Law and the Center for Interdisciplinary Law and Policy Studies, hosts one-day conferences every two years. This one-day conference in Ohio's state capital will consider the roles of the separate branches of state government and the relationships between them, topics not only of crucial importance generally but also ones of extra significance in a time of divided government.

CLE Credit: This conference has been approved by the Supreme Court of Ohio Commission on Continuing Legal Education for 4.5 total CLE hours, with 0 hours of ethics, 0 hours of professionalism, and 0 hours of substance abuse instruction.

The Future of Patent Reform

February 23, 2007
Moritz College of Law, Saxbe Auditorium, Columbus, OH
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For the first time in more than 50 years, Congress is considering major reforms to the patent system. Reform bills and proposals have come on the heels of much criticism from businesses (including many in the technology and software industries), from legal commentators and practitioners, and even from parts of the federal government itself (including the Federal Trade Commission's 2003 report, To Promote Innovation: The Proper Balance Between Competition and Patent Law and Policy).

Is the patent system in need of major reforms? If so, what should those reforms entail? This symposium examines these questions and "The Future of Patent Reform" in the United States

Building Democracy Through Online Citizen Deliberation

November 16-18, 2005
The Blackwell Hotel, Columbus, OH
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The Center will co-host a conference with the departments of City and Regional Planning and the School of Journalism and Communication to encourage government and civil society leaders to promote civic engagement through the use of "cyberdemocracy" web applications. This will be accomplished through a workshop and publications involving stakeholders in learning about, and pilot testing, tools for on-line citizen policy deliberations.

Disability, Narrative and the Law

February 16-17, 2006
Moritz College of Law, Saxbe Auditorium, Columbus, OH
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The Center in partnership with the Department of English, the Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities, and the Office of the ADA Coordinator will host "Disability, Narrative and the Law." This conference will shed light on the role of personal narrative in effectively advancing the cause of disability rights, whether in individual cases or in arenas of legislation and policy making.

The conference will bring together researchers from law and the humanities to explore how themes of autonomy and dependency, "normal" and "abnormal," innocence and fault, sameness and difference all play out in legal discussions about disability and in the self-understanding of persons with disabilities.

Moreover, these researchers will interact with outstanding national practitioners to analyze how personal experience narratives concerned with disability bear on actual legal practice, how legal arguments get translated back into individuals' accounts of being disabled, and how tensions may arise between the highly individualized, personal experience of disability and the necessity of developing a pragmatic legal definition of disability under relevant statutory and case law.