Museum of Tort Law

The Museum of Tort Law, created by Ralph Nader, lawyer and consumer advocate and former presidential candidate, opened recently. PBS's Newshour has the story. Very interesting. 6 min 26 sec video, transcript available. More with Nader here.

Arbitration

The New York Times recently published a series of three articles about arbitration accompanied by a video  (hard to understand in parts). 5 min 49 sec. no transcript.
The articles are:

• Arbitration Everywhere, Stacking the Deck of Justice
• In Arbitration, a ‘Privatization of the Justice System’
• In Religious Arbitration, Scripture Is the Rule of Law

Lance Armstrong

Lance Armstrong has been ordered to pay $10 million by arbitrators because of what the arbitrators called his « engaging in an unparalleled pageant of international perjury, fraud and conspiracy ». NPR's Morning Edition has the story here. 3 min 43 sec, transcript available.

Arbitration

A recent event at London School of Economics addressed the question of whether arbitrators should be allowed to apply the law and should they be allowed to decide matters of public policy. Central to the debate was discussion of a Jan Paulsson's newest book The Idea of Arbitration.  Speakers included Dr Tariq Baloch, Salim Moolan, Dr Jan Kleinheisterkamp, Dr Charles Poncet, Sir Bernard Rix, Professor Derek Roebuck, Professor Catherine Rogers, Professor Horatia Muir Watt.
Recorded on 13 February 2014. Audio and video available for downloading, almost 2 hours, no transcript.

A New 'World Court'?

The Rt Hon The Lord Goldsmith QC, Former Attorney General, gave the 2013 annual Gray's Inn Reading on June 27. The lecture, presented by Gresham College in London, was entitled 'The Privatisation of Law: Has a World Court finally been created by modern international arbitration?' audio and video, 60 min, transcript available.

London School of Economics lectures of interest to lawyers

LSE posts podcasts and videos of lectures given at their institution on many subjects.
On 23 May the lecture was entitled "Unlawful Laws: How far can arbitrators go?" Pierre Mayer and Jan Paulsson discussed the question of whether international arbitrators can consider some otherwise applicable laws to be unlawful. 119 min, no transcript
On 14 May Jonathan Sumption, a justice of the UK Supreme Court, discussed foreign policy in the UK courts. 81 min, transcript (with slight variations) available here
Both lectures are available in streaming or downloadable audio only.
Older lectures of interest to lawyers include Dreaming Transnational Law - Dream, Faith, Vision and Utopia in current legal discourse  by Professor Ralf Michaels of Duke University Law School recorded on 17 November 2011. 88 min. and, on 13 January 2011, A European Contract Law: a cuckoo in the nest? by Hugh Beale professor of law at the University of Warwick. 78 min, no transcript.
Both of these earlier lectures are available in video as well as audio, but the sound is better in the audio version.

Hot Coffee

Hot Coffee, a documentary about the civil justice system, was featured on Democracy Now! of Jan. 25, 2011. The title of the film refers to the case of Stella Liebeck who sued McDonald's for injuries she received from scalding coffee. In the first segment of the news program, Ms Liebeck's daughter and son-in-law are interviewed. In another segment,  a former judge on the Mississippi supreme court who was attacked by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because he wasn't "corporate" enough, is seen. Mandatory arbitration clauses are examined. Finally, the  effects of limits (or "caps") on medical malpractice awards is presented through the story of a family affected by them.
The site for the documentary is here. A DVD will be on sale in the U.S. from Nov. 1.
The whole presentation of the documentary is ± 45 min. downloadable and streaming audio and video, transcript available.