2014 Chicago-Kent Law Review Live Symposium

Presented in partnership with The Justice John Paul Stevens Jury Center

Symposium Editors

Professor Nancy S. Marder, IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law
Professor Valerie P. Hans, Cornell Law School

Chicago-Kent College of Law
565 West Adams Street
Chicago, Illinois 60661
Friday, October 10, 2014

The jury in the United States is fraught with paradoxes. Even though the number of jury trials in the United States continues to decline, jury trials play a prominent role in our culture and continue to occupy headlines in newspapers and top stories on television. Americans might not always agree with the verdict that any given jury renders, but they continue to express their support for the jury system in poll after poll. The jury plays important and varied roles in American society, and the onsite symposium at Chicago-Kent brings together jury scholars, practitioners, law professors, and law students to explore these roles. The symposium panels, and the conference papers that will be published afterward in the Chicago-Kent Law Review, examine a number of questions pertaining to the jury, including the following: In this age of 24/7 media coverage and social media, how can we ensure that juries are impartial? Does the jury play a political role in the United States, and if so, what is the nature of this role? What lessons can we learn from other countries’ jury systems and mixed courts that include lay people and professional judges, and what lessons can we learn from practitioners, jury consultants, and former jurors in the United States about what the jury does well and where there is still room for improvement?

Schedule

8:00am	Continental Breakfast	Lobby
8:45am	Introduction	Marovitz Courtroom
9:00am	Panel 1: Contemporary Challenges to Jury Impartiality	Marovitz Courtroom
10:15am	Coffee Break	Lobby
10:30am	Panel 2: The Jury as a Political Institution	Marovitz Courtroom
12:00pm	Luncheon & Keynote	Morris Hall
1:30pm	Panel 3: Practices and Innovations: A Cross-Country Exchange	Marovitz Courtroom
2:45pm	Coffee Break	Lobby
3:00pm	Panel 4: Lawyers, Judges & Jurors: Practitioners’ Perspectives	Marovitz Courtroom
4:15pm	Concluding Thoughts	Marovitz Courtroom
4:30pm	Reception	Morris Hall

Panel 1: Contemporary Challenges to Jury Impartiality

Panel Moderator
Joan E. Steinman, University Distinguished Professor, IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law

Barbara O’Brien, Associate Professor of Law, Michigan State University College of Law
Catherine Grosso, Associate Professor of Law, Michigan State University College of Law
Talking to Jurors: Using Conversation Analysis to Understand Bias in Jury Selection

Neil Vidmar, Russell M. Robinson II Professor of Law, Duke University School of Law
Kara Mackillop, Affiliate, Duke Center for Criminal Justice and Professional Responsibility
Decision-Making in the Dark: How Pre-Trial Errors Change the Narrative in Criminal Jury Trials

Nancy S. Marder, Professor of Law, IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law
Juror Bias, Voir Dire, and the Judge-Jury Relationship

Panel 2: The Jury as a Political Institution

Panel Moderator
Christopher W. Schmidt, Associate Professor of Law, IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law

Robert P. Burns, Professor of Law, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
Psychological Criticisms of the American Trial

Jeffrey Abramson, Professor of Law, University of Texas at Austin School of Law
The Jury: Populist, Representative, or Deliberative Democracy?

Mary Rose, Associate Professor, University of Texas at Austin
Common Sense Versus Bias on the Jury

Richard Lempert, Eric Stein Distinguished University Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
The American Jury System

Keynote Speaker

Hon. James F. Holderman, United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois
Maximizing Jurors’ Understanding

Group picture of the Symposium keynote speaker, editor, and organizers

Panel 3: Practices and Innovations: A Cross-Country Exchange

Panel Moderator
David J. Gerber, Distinguished Professor of Law, IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law

Valerie P. Hans, Professor of Law, Cornell Law School
The Jury Debate in Taiwan

Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovich, Professor, Michigan State University
Ears of the Deaf: The Theory and Reality of Lay Judges in Mixed Tribunals

Marie Comiskey, Visiting Fellow University of Toronto
First Nations and Juries: The Linguistic and Representational
Issues in Canadian Jury Trials

Thaddeus Hoffmeister, Professor of Law, University of Dayton School of Law
Preventing Juror Misconduct in a Digital World

Panel 4: Lawyers, Judges & Jurors: Practitioners’ Perspectives

Panel Moderator
Hon. David A. Erickson (Ret.), Senior Instructor of Law, IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law

Hon. Matthew Kennelly, United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois

Richard Kling, Clinical Professor of Law, IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law

Bruce Kohen, Partner, Anesi Ozmon Rodin Novak & Kohen Ltd.

James Matsumoto, Jury Foreperson for the first Rod Blagojevich jury trial

Alan Tuerkheimer, Senior Litigation Communication Expert, Zagnoli McEvoy Foley LLC