CAMDEN — Insurance and issues of risk are important in all facets of life, and the recognition of risk and attempts to manage it are defining features of everyday life.
The newly established Center for Risk and Responsibility at the Rutgers School of Law–Camden will provide a national forum to discuss risk issues and how to better manage them.
“The Center for Risk and Responsibility will provide a forum for scholarly discourse and promote interchange across the disciplines that study risk,” says Rayman L. Solomon, dean of the Rutgers School of Law–Camden. “This is an excellent example of how collaboration between legal scholars and the bar benefits both the legal profession and legal scholarship.”
Initially, the center will present two events each academic year: a workshop for scholars and a conference that will also include leading insurance industry experts.
“The new center will explore the ways in which society makes choices about risk, its proper allocation, and compensation for the harm caused when risks materialize,” says Jay Feinman, a distinguished professor of law at the Rutgers School of Law–Camden and co-founder of the center.
Feinman also is the author of the book Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It (Penguin, 2010).
Rick Swedloff, an assistant professor of law at Rutgers–Camden and co-founder of the center, says that without insurance proceeds, most tort victims would be unwilling to sue; without a way to protect against the potential loss of the home, banks would be unwilling to finance home ownership; and without a system of insurance, most Americans would find themselves without access to quality health care.
“Given its prevalence, one would think that insurance would be at the center of legal study, but there is only one other insurance law center in this country,” Swedloff says. “The Center for Risk and Responsibility is an opportunity to leverage the assets of Rutgers University–Camden to join together academics from different disciplines and practitioners in various fields to discuss these important issues.”
Planned workshops will invite insurance law scholars from across the country to the Rutgers–Camden campus for a day-long discussion and presentation of works-in-progress, drafts, and ideas for scholarly projects.
The conferences will involve legal academics, social scientists, practicing lawyers, industry executives, and government officials, as appropriate to the topics.
“We want to bring together people who are interested in the overlapping set of issues related to how society manages risk and risk allocation,” says Adam Scales, a professor of law at Rutgers–Camden and co-founder of the center. “The center becomes a device for concentrating our efforts in that area.”
The center’s first conference, “Bad Faith and Beyond: A Conference on the Law of Claims Practices,” will be held from 9:45 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 29. More information about the conference is at camlaw.rutgers.edu/bad-faith-beyond.
A noted legal scholar, Feinman is the author of Law 101: Everything You Need to Know About American Law and has written widely on tort law and insurance law.
Scales is the author of six published articles on topics like corporate succession in insurance, the evolution of accidental death insurance, and flood insurance.
Swedloff has also authored published articles on torts and insurance and practiced as a litigation associate with Dechert LLP in Philadelphia, where he specialized in complex commercial, tort and insurance cases.
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Media Contact: Ed Moorhouse
(856) 225-6759
E-mail: ejmoor@camden.rutgers.edu