Month: April 2015

“Ascertainability” in Class Action Lawsuits

“Ascertainability” in Class Action Lawsuits

Should a court be able to identify each individual member of a plaintiff class before allowing a class action lawsuit to go forward? In this episode, we interview Geoff Shaw (YLS 2016) about his forthcoming Note, “Class Ascertainability.”

Federal Sentencing Error

Federal Sentencing Error

What happens when a federal judge makes a mistake in calculating your sentence? On our first episode, we interview Kate Huddleston (YLS ’16) about her forthcoming piece “Federal Sentencing Error as Loss of Chance” and delve into the world of challenging sentences based on incorrect calculations under the federal Sentencing Guidelines.

Jane Owen: On Public Green Spaces, Horticulture, and Parks

Jane Owen: On Public Green Spaces, Horticulture, and Parks

Join us for an interview with Jane Owen. Jane is a senior editor at the Financial Times, and has extensively written on gardens, travel, and public spaces. In this interview, she reflects on beauty, and the latent artistry in our landscapes.

Finding Agency Through Humility: Authors Zellmer and Klein Discuss Unnatural Disasters and American Law

Finding Agency Through Humility: Authors Zellmer and Klein Discuss Unnatural Disasters and American Law

Christine Klein, the Chesterfield Smith Professor of at the University of Florida Levin College of Law and Sandra Zellmer, the Robert Daugherty Professor at the University of Nebraska Law College, discuss the environmental and social implications of decades of American engineering along the Mississippi River. In 2014, they wrote the book Mississippi River Tragedies: A Century of Unnatural Disaster. The book focuses on the dramatic transformation of the river over the last century and the precarious positions that human communities have in relationship to it. The results are what they call catastrophic “unnatural disasters.” Behind all of this, they argue, is a system of American law that amplifies and codifies American ambivalence toward nature. In this episode we discuss what they mean by “unnatural disasters” and what insights they have about how the American legal system creates the environmental problems so many of our environmental policies are trying to solve.