Law Professor Presents on Civil Procedure at Annual Meeting

David Cleveland, assistant professor of law at the Shepard Broad Law Center, presented “Ending the Era of Unprecedential Precedents” at the New Scholars Workshop on Civil Procedure at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) annual meeting held July 27-Aug. 2 in Palm Beach. His talk examined the history of publication and precedent, arguments for acknowledging the precedential value of all opinions, the U.S. Supreme Court’s past treatment of the issue, and the opinions of individual Justices on the issue.

Cleveland’s presentation was attended by present and past members of the federal judiciary as well as law school deans and faculty. The talk spanned material from his first two articles, “Overturning the Last Stone: The Final Step in Returning Precedential Status to All Opinions” in the Journal of Appellate Practice and Process (2009) and “Draining the Morass: Ending the Jurisprudentially Unsound Unpublication System.”