​​The 31st Annual Clifford Symposium on Tort Law & Social Policy

For over a century, social science and civil justice have influenced one another, fueling debates that drive innovation and expose systemic challenges. That conversation, generated out of the findings of the psychologists who observe and analyze human behavior, has produced new insights and procedures but also sharp criticism of the way lawyers have gone about their work and the way social scientists have conducted their assessments of the civil justice system. 

This year’s Clifford Symposium revisits a crucial topic—the influence, or absence thereof, of key social science insights on civil justice. The symposium will explore five key questions raised by social science scholarship. The first, and the original inspiration for this program, is the impact of the oeuvre of the late Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize winner in Economics. It will then turn to the work of another outstanding social scientist, Tom Tyler, whose insights about voice and legitimacy have had a profound influence on how we think about civil justice processes. The symposium will then consider what social science research might teach us about decision maker prejudice and bias, as well as how judges perform their assigned tasks. Finally, it will examine the integrity of social science research and its broader implications for the legal system.