32nd Annual Clifford Symposium on Tort Law and Social Policy

Get ready for a deep dive into the world of tort law and social policy at the 32nd Annual Clifford Symposium – it’s going to be insightful!

Recent political and social turmoil has, to a significant degree, distracted us from perhaps the most profound challenge the human race has ever faced—our planet’s rapidly changing climate, driven by the relentless heating of the earth’s atmosphere through human activity. While the salvaging of democracy and rejection of armed violence seem immensely important, they pale in comparison to the need to respond to the harm caused by global warming.

Of course, America’s courts cannot, by themselves, resolve the challenge of climate change. But they can help us begin to respond by addressing some of its most serious consequences. This year’s Clifford Symposium gathers more than 25 scholars who propose a variety of ways to use our legal system as a part of the process of responding to climate dangers.

We begin with a focus on the use of litigation to address the “existential risk” of global warming in all its “polycentric” and “extraterritorial” complexity. As with most issues of civil litigation in America, the question of insurance coverage is of singular importance. The Symposium will bring together some of this country’s leading insurance law experts to consider what insurance can and cannot do when faced with the climate crisis.

That discussion will be followed by consideration of the need to recognize and redress the unequal impact of the harm caused by global warming. Some of the difficulties we face present problems not simply for discrete individuals or groups but the whole of impacted communities. We find ourselves in a place where we may need to rethink how suffering communities ought to be helped and by whom. That help may, sometimes, have to come not from courts but through regulatory action or legislative mandate.

The task our Clifford scholars will attempt to address is monumental. In these seemingly dark days, their faith in law and legal action signal hope that our civil justice system can offer an effective response to the naysayers and Know-Nothings.