Professor Paul Zwier is 2005 Washburn Advocacy Scholar in Residence
Professor Paul J. Zwier II from the Emory Law School will be the 2005 Washburn Advocacy Scholar in Residence when he visits Washburn Law March 14-18, 2005. During his visit Professor Zwier will give a public lecture titled "The Supreme Court's Struggle To Control Civil Juries: The Place of Retribution in Awarding Punitive Damages."
Watch Professor Zwier's public lecture (46 minutes) (requires Windows Media Player
More details about the lecture are given below.
Paul J. Zwier, II is one of the nation's most distinguished professors of advocacy and skills training. Emory Law School’s Professor of Law and Director of the Advocacy Skills Program, he earned a bachelor's degree from Calvin College in 1976, a J.D. from Pepperdine University in 1979, and an L.L.M. from Temple University in 1981. He was Professor of Law at The University of Tennessee Law School and named Director of the Center for Advocacy and Dispute Resolution in 1999. Before that, he was at the University of Richmond's T.C. Williams School of Law, where he was a professor of law and former director of the Lawyering Skills Program for eighteen years.
Professor Zwier is the Director of Education for the National Institute for Trial Advocacy (NITA) and has taught in NITA's Harvard Teachers' Training Conference, an institute designed to assist trial advocacy teachers in becoming more accomplished.
Professor Zwier has taught advocacy to international lawyers and judges in Northern Ireland, Scotland, England, Hong Kong and Bejing, and led seminars in negotiation and dispute resolution for black South African lawyers as part of a State Department program. In 1998, Zwier received NITA's Prentice Marshall Award. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including Torts: Cases, Problems, and Exercises (Anderson, 2002) (with Weaver, Bauman, Cross, Klein, Martin); Effective Expert Testimony (NITA, 2000) (with Malone), and "The 'Care Perspective,' American Legal Counselors, and Reformed Christian Philosophy," 2002 Rutgers J.L. and Relig., 3. No. 2. He has made professional presentations and consulted with dozens of law firms and other organizations. In addition to torts, Zwier teaches Advanced Trial Advocacy, Case Development, and an Advanced Negotiation Seminar.
Public Lecture Details
The Supreme Court's Struggle To Control Civil Juries: The Place of Retribution in Awarding Punitive Damages will be given Monday, March 14, 2005 at noon in the Bradbury Thompson Center.
Recently, in a series of landmark decisions, the United States Supreme Court put nationwide limits on jurors who award punitive damages in civil cases. The Court decided that due process requires judges to review and, sometimes recalculate, the amounts of money awarded by jurors as punitive damages. Departing from 200 years of common law jurisprudence that juries' punitive damage awards should be overturned only if they are "grossly excessive" and unsupported by evidence, the Court now requires full review of these awards, thus often preventing juries in civil cases from meting out financial retribution when they find outrageously wrongful conduct.
Professor Zwier contends the Court's current attitude toward punitive damages severely weakens the underlying purpose of these jury-awarded damages: to punish the wrongdoer. Professor Zwier will examine the Supreme Court's recent case law and discuss the important role punitive damages play in expressing community moral sentiment and in curbing the excesses of the markets.
Download and view the brochure created for Professor Zwier's visit (.3 MB PDF; requires Adobe Acrobat reader.
