In Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins (1938), the Supreme Court famously ruled that the federal courts could no longer apply “general common law”—that is, unwritten, non-federal law that was not tied to a sovereign source and that since the Founding had been applied by courts to a wide range of legal issues. As one commentator wrote shortly after Erie, the decision was “revolutionary in its consequences, and shatters the entire foundations of jurisprudence in the federal courts as they have existed from the beginning and as they have been declared by great judges from Marshall and Story down to the present date.” In recent years, however, there has been a revival of scholarly interest in the general common law, extending to topics such as remedies, procedure, standing, choice of law, jurisdiction, international law, statutory interpretation, and constitutional rights. This roundtable-style conference will consider whether and how the “general common law revival” can be reconciled with Erie, the potential modern relevance of general common law, and Erie’s continued viability. 

Participants

• William Baude (UChicago)
• A.J. Bellia (Notre Dame)
• Curtis Bradley (UChicago)
• Molly Brady (Harvard)
• Samuel Bray (UChicago)
• Jud Campbell (Stanford)
• Brad Clark (George Washington)
• Bridget Fahey (UChicago)
• Maggie Gardner (Cornell)
• Jonathan Gienapp (Stanford)
• Abbe Gluck (Yale)
• Jack Goldsmith (Harvard)
• Tara Grove (Texas)
• John Harrison (Virginia)
• Lawrence Lessig (Harvard)
• Josh Macey (Yale)
• Darrell Miller (UChicago)
• Caleb Nelson (Virginia)
• Ketan Ramakrishnan (Yale)
• Stephen Sachs (Harvard)
• Diane Wood (UChicago)
• Ernest Young (Duke)