On Friday, September 16, 2016, Savannah Law Review will present American Legal Fictions, a Colloquium that will survey academic topics examining the role of legal fictions in shaping the law.
The law is enmeshed with fictions. The judiciary as truth seeker disdains perjury yet imports hypothetical realities to attain justice within strict legal frameworks. The legislature mandates meanings to common words that often approach the realm of fantasy. Assignment of fiction within the law has provoked robust academic attention and debate regarding its utility and propriety. Legal fictions have roots in Ancient Roman law in which praetors (magistrates) unable to abrogate laws could derogate laws through this means under the auspices of equitable principles. America advances legal fictions through the common law to soften rigid legal rules. And, today, our courts and legislatures continue to fashion new legal fictions—possibly theorized as each party’s attempts to usurp the other. Examples of legal fictions abound from constitutional interpretation to granting remedies by expanding rights.
Professor Garrett Epps, contributing editor for The Atlantic and Professor of Law at University of Baltimore School of Law, will present the Keynote Address. Leading up to the Keynote Address, four panels of scholars and practitioners will engage in provocative discussions centered on how fiction impacts the law. The panels will incorporate employment law, intellectual property, real property, antitrust, tax policy, civil rights, legal history, judicial ethics, criminal procedure, the sharing economy, conflict minerals, and more. Six Georgia Continuing Legal Education Credits will be available for the panels for the cost of the credits ($30).
The full list of presenters includes: Darren Bush (University of Houston Law Center); Thomas P. Crocker (University of South Carolina School of Law); Tessa R. Davis (University of South Carolina School of Law); J. Amy Dillard (University of Baltimore School of Law); David Fagundes (Professor of Law, University of Houston Law Center); Wade W. Herring II (HunterMaclean); Zachary Kramer (Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law); Hon. Raymond J. McKoski (The John Marshall Law School); Karen Petroksi (Professor of Law, Saint Louis University School of Law); Marc Roark (Savannah Law School); Caprice L. Roberts (Savannah Law School); Shaakirrah R. Sanders (University of Idaho College of Law); Eric J. Segall (Georgia State University College of Law); Andrew Siegel (Seattle School of Law); Abbey Stemler (Kelley School of Business, Indiana University); Josh Stillman (Jones Day); Karen Woody (Kelley School of Business, Indiana University).
I wish I were at Savannah Law School today for conference.
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