The Globalization of Class Actions Conference Agenda
The Globalization of Class Actions Conference Overview

This major conference will bring together leading legal scholars, practitioners and judges from North and South America, Europe, Africa and Asia to examine and debate the global spread of class actions and other forms of representative and group litigation.

The products of the conference will be:

• An edited volume based on conference contributions, providing the first comprehensive overview of a significant worldwide change in the nature of civil litigation, published in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
• A book containing the texts (in English) of statutes and rules providing for class actions and other forms of representative and group litigation, and analyses of how these legal vehicles operate in practice, the extent and variety of their uses to date, and projections for the future.
• A website with updates of the laws as they develop.

Organizers

The project and conference are organized by Prof. Deborah Hensler and Dr. Christopher Hodges. Hensler is the Judge John W. Ford Professor of Dispute Resolution at Stanford Law School and the former Director of the Rand Institute for Civil Justice, and a fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. She is the lead author of CLASS ACTION DILEMMAS: PURSUING PUBLIC GOALS FOR PRIVATE GAIN (2000) and has written extensively about mass tort litigation. Hodges is an Associate Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies and head of its research program on Civil Justice Systems. Prior to joining the Centre, Hodges was a partner at CMS Cameron McKenna, in London. He is the author of MULTI-PARTY ACTIONS (2001) and EUROPEAN REGULATION OF CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY (2005).

Sponsors and costs

Major funding for the conference has been provided by the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Stanford Law School, and the Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies. Additional support for the conference has been contributed by Ashursts; James Greer, Esq; Lieff Cabraser Heiman & Bernstein LLP; Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP; and Swiss Re.