For students, summer means a break from classes and a chance to pursue internships; for faculty, it means a chance to be productive in ways other than teaching. Colorado Law faculty members are sponsoring a number of conferences hosted on campus this summer. Conferences like these represent one of the many ways Colorado Law faculty engage in scholarship and research, and provide the opportunity to collaborate with law scholars from other top law schools. Below are highlights of the Colorado Law faculty conferences and workshops for this summer:
In June, Professor William Boyd hosted a workshop on “The Role of Public Utility Commissions in Climate and Energy Policy” at the law school. The workshop was jointly sponsored by the University of Colorado Law School Energy Innovation Initiative, UCLA Law School, the University of Minnesota Law School, and the University of Texas McCombs School of Business, and drew a wide range of participants from around the country. Participants included a large number of scholars from national law schools, a former state public utilities commissioner, and members of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Professors Peter Huang and Erik Gerding will host a two-day workshop on July 10 and 11 on “Cognitive Sciences and Financial Decision-Making,” which will include a number of business law scholars writing about financial law and the financial crisis, along with two senior marketing scholars. The goal of this workshop is to advance the scholarship of business law by bringing together two of the leading researchers in behavioral economics and judgment/decision making from marketing departments to interact with mostly junior law professors and provide for the cross-fertilization of diverse ideas and multiple perspectives.
On July 12 and 13, Professor Lakshman Guruswamy and the Colorado Journal of Environmental Law and Policy are sponsoring a workshop on “Drafting Model Laws on Indoor Pollution for Developing and Developed Nations” at the law school. The primary purpose of the workshop is to demonstrate the extent to which model law, as a societal instrument, can help address the global problem of indoor pollution resulting from cook stoves that burn dirty fuel and cause health problems. The two-day conference will begin with several general sessions, and then move into breakout sessions in which participants will work together on drafting model laws and commentaries.
Professor Andrew Schwartz will host the Junior Business Law Conference at Colorado Law on July 12 and 13. The Junior Business Law Conference brings together some of the most promising and prominent business and commercial law scholars in their first seven years of teaching to comment upon and improve each other’s works-in-progress. Each participant will bring a current work-in-progress, and the papers will be reviewed and critiqued in a series of focused workshop sessions. This year’s attendees include business law scholars from Columbia University, the University of Chicago, the University of Virginia, and several other law schools.
Later this summer, Colorado Law will host the fourth annual Work-in-Progress Workshop on Natural Resources, Energy, and Environment in a Climate Changed World. For the last two years the workshop has been co-sponsored by Duke Law School. Organizers William Boyd (Colorado Law), Sarah Krakoff (Colorado Law), Jed Purdy (Duke) and Jim Salzman (Duke) will convene a high level group of scholars for an intensive two-day seminar on the most pressing issues in natural resources and environmental law and policy in order to sharpen ideas and stimulate creative and meaningful scholarship. A number of junior and senior scholars from around the nation are invited each year, and a highlight of this year’s workshop is the Saturday hike in the high country of the Rockies.
To close out the summer conference schedule, Professors Anna Spain and David Zaring (Wharton) are co-sponsoring a conference on international law at Colorado Law on Friday, September 28. The conference intends to provide a forum for scholarly exchange and debate on some of the most pressing issues in international law. The conference will feature two noted international law scholars–Kal Raustiala (UCLA) and Ed Swaine (George Washington University)–as well as nine junior international law scholars from the nation's top law schools who will present their current works-in-progress.