Colorado Law Summer Conferences Draw Scholars from Around the World

Colorado Law’s seven Summer Conferences provided professors and practitioners the opportunity to share their scholarship and discuss current issues in their specific field of law.

Emerging Family Law Scholars and Teachers Annual Conference
Professor Clare Huntington helped organize the annual conference for emerging family law scholars and teachers that kicked off Colorado Law’s Summer Conference Series. Participants worked on articles and book chapters that the participants had written and sharing teaching tips. Professor Huntington presented the introduction and one chapter from her draft book, Flourishing Families: Positive Psychology and Contemporary Family Law. With 40 participants from all around the country, she feels the conference, “was a huge success” and that all who attended benefitted from the intellectual exchange and shared camaraderie.

Junior Tax Scholars Conference
In June, two Colorado Law tax professors, Miranda Fleischer and Victor Fleischer, hosted a summer works-in-progress research conference for a handful of tax scholars from across the country. Topics included international tax, executive compensation reform, and regulatory gamesmanship and tax planning. The Fleischers originally co-founded the "Junior Tax Scholars" conference at Colorado in 2006 with colleagues from NYU and Columbia law schools.

Property Works in Progress Conference
On June 1-3, nearly 50 leading property scholars gathered for this third annual conference organized by Professor Nestor Davidson. Participants came from across the country and as far away as Europe and Israel to hear formal presentations and share insights in less formal roundtable sessions. The Conference has become the leading venue for property scholars across a range of perspectives and methodologies, providing a rare crosscutting platform for one of the most exciting areas of contemporary legal scholarship.

The Martz Conference on Natural Resources Law and Policy
The Natural Resources Law Center’s (NRLC) Annual Summer Conference took place from June 3-5 and played host to leading faculty, scholars, public officials, and students who gathered to discuss the current issues that dominate the field of natural resources law and policy. As director of NRLC, Professor Mark Squillace hosted the event and announced the NRLC’s decision to name the annual summer conference in honor of Clyde Martz—a teacher, lawyer, scholar, and public servant who was instrumental in founding the NRLC in 1982 and who spent 15 years at Colorado Law teaching natural resources law.

This year’s conference, titled “Western Water Law, Policy, and Management: Ripples, Currents, and New Channels for Inquiry,” centered around western water law, focusing on how the increasing demand for water is overwhelming the ability to manage change and accommodate the diversity of interests and values related to water resources. Participates had interactive discussions with expert panelists regarding topics such as environmental challenges and infrastructure and engineering topics related to water management.

Silicon Flatirons Center: Feld-Weiser One-on-One
On June 10, Professor Phil Weiser conducted the third interview in a series of interviews with Brad Feld, a local venture capitalist, as part of Silicon Flatirons' Entrepreneurship Initiative. The interview focused on the challenges and importance of finding life-work balance. Feld feels that "balance improves the quality/quantity of work that you can get done and he has become more effective at accomplishing stuff." The interview also addressed how to develop strategies to both work hard and work effectively as well as how to define success not just in work, but in life.

Conference on Legal Information: Scholarship and Teaching
The teaching of legal research was the focus of this annual conference organized by Professor Barbara Bintliff, and held at Colorado Law on June 21-22. Participants included law professors, law library directors, legal research faculty, and law librarians from across the United States. The focus this year was on theoretical and practical aspects of legal research instruction. Specifically, it addressed how to integrate training in practical lawyering skills and professional ethics into the teaching of legal research. Participants summarized their discussions in the Boulder Statement on Legal Research Education document that expresses in a new way the principles of legal research instruction.

New Thinking in Climate Change Law and Policy Works-in-Progress Symposium
On August 6-7, fourteen law professors who write about climate change and related issues gathered in Boulder for a two-day workshop involving intensive group discussion about each participant’s current draft paper. Law professors from Stanford, Yale, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, and CU attended and participated in a lively conversation about climate change and the many conundrums that it presents. Professor Sarah Krakoff presented a paper examining the motivations of participants in local climate action groups, and linking the findings to implications for the government’s role with respect to regulating carbon emissions. Professor William Boyd presented a paper focusing on how climate change and new technologies are transforming the political and governance possibilities for addressing the gradual disappearance of the world’s tropical forests. The conference was hailed by one participant as “perfect” and several others saying it was the ‘best academic gathering they had been to.” Plans are already afoot to host another workshop next year.