Announcement of Conference Symposium and Call for Proposals
Inheritance and Inequality
Fifth Biennial Conference on Critical Trusts & Estates and Symposium of the Drexel Law Review
Expressions of interest due May 1, 2024
Program September 27-28, 2024, Philadelphia, PA
We are pleased to announce a conference on “Inheritance Inequality” (the Fifth Biennial Conference on Critical Trusts and Estates). The conference will take place on Friday September 27 and Saturday September 28, 2024 at Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and will be sponsored by the Drexel Law Review. The keynote speaker will be Chris Rabb, genealogist, family historian, educator, author, policy-shaper. His keynote will address the intersections of race, wealth, and social enterprise.
We invite paper and/or full panel proposals on any topic related to the many intersections of wills, trusts and estates with gender, race, class, and other identity axes. We are especially interested in presentations and papers that explore connections between and among wills, trusts, estates, gender, race, and wealth inequality. Such topics might include, but are not limited to, connections between estate planning, wealth inequality, and climate change; non-traditional families; wills and trusts issues for the LGBTQ+ community, incarcerated people, and the undocumented; offshore assets and domestic inequality; and inheritance and citizenship.
We also invite interventions on any other aspect of the conference theme of inheritance inequality (for example, access to estate planning, default rules and definitions, property transfer rules and norms, the estate tax and luxury taxes, private responses to climate change, and integrating climate change into the Trusts and Estates curriculum). Interdisciplinary approaches, linking the law to themes in art, literature, history, and the social sciences, among others, are welcome. Participants can be academics, practitioners, government officials, policy researchers, economists, graduate students, or others with an interest and expertise in inheritance law. Contributors from the United States as well as other countries are welcome.
Those interested in participating in the conference are asked to submit 300 word abstracts of paper proposals, or 1,000 word panel proposals, including brief descriptions of the papers on the panel, to Deborah Gordon (dsg45@drexel.edu), Carla Spivack (cspiv@albanylaw.edu), and Gracen Hashem (gh427@drexel.edu) by Wednesday, May 1, 2024. Proposals should indicate if there is interest in publishing, as publication opportunities will be available to selected presenters. Applicants will be notified before June 1, 2024. Selected participants will be expected to circulate draft papers no later than August 27, 2024. Final papers will be due October 27, 2024.
For those presenting at the conference, the sponsor will cover lodging and selected meal costs. If a participant is unable to obtain reimbursement from their home institution for travel, such expenses may be covered should funds become available.
We eagerly anticipate hearing from prospective participants and are enthusiastic about facilitating engaging conversations at the upcoming conference.
