Legal Forum Symposium to Examine Law in Times of Disaster

The University of Chicago Legal Forum will convene scholars from across the country on November 8 for a day-long symposium on “Crisis, Calamity, and Catastrophe: Law in Times of Disaster.”

The event will focus on disasters in four major spheres—environmental, financial, democratic, and public health—and how laws can help solve, regulate, and respond to them. Scholarly papers generated by the symposium will be included in the next volume of the Legal Forum, which publishes once a year.

“We chose this topic because it is broad and multifaceted, encompassing various legal domains,” said Legal Forum Editor in Chief Kasey Coleman, ’25. “The most obvious reading of our topic suggests natural disasters, but the topic covers many other types: Disasters in international law, the January 6th insurrection, which led to thousands of criminal cases, the opioid crisis, which precipitated complex multi-district litigation . . . The list goes on. Ultimately, we hope that the interdisciplinary nature of this field invites collaborative engagement to navigate complexities and foster effective legal responses to the evolving challenges of our time.”

The symposium will include four panel discussions to cover the four chosen themes, with experts including Michael Burger and Jeff Schlegelmilch (Columbia University), who will talk about law’s adaptations in times of climate disaster; Adrian Walters (Chicago-Kent College of Law), who will discuss majority rule and bankruptcy resolution of mass harm events; Manoj Mate (University at Buffalo School of Law), who will discuss elections, courts, and democratic crises; and Michael Sinha and Alison McCarthy (St. Louis University School of Law), who will share public health lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul will deliver the keynote in a question-and-answer session moderated by Lecturer in Law Michael A. Scodro.

Other Law School faculty moderating panels are: Clinical Professor Mark Templeton, Lecturer in Law Jared Mayer, Professor Genevieve Lakier, and Professor Anup Malani.

Caroline Cohen, ’25, symposium editor, said, “My hope is that this symposium provides a space for our contributors to engage with ideas that are unfamiliar to them, but which might be informative in thinking about their own approaches to law and legal problem-solving in a new light.”

For the full schedule and list of speakers, visit the event page.