One or more presenters to be selected from a call for papers.
January 2011 will mark the 20th anniversary of the publication of Douglas Laycock’s landmark book, The Death of the Irreparable Injury Rule. In the book, Professor Laycock endeavored to demonstrate that courts had eroded the rigid requirement that a plaintiff demonstrate irreparable injury as a prerequisite to obtaining injunctive relief. Professor Laycock argued forcefully for a new functional balancing approach to remedial choices. Recently, the Supreme Court has expressed a renewed interest in what the Court has termed “traditional” equitable principles in cases such as EBay v. MercExchange, LLC, Winter v. NRDC and Nken v. Holder. Indeed, this term the Supreme Court has returned again to the question of what constitutes irreparable harm in cases involving violations of statutory rights in Monsanto v. Geerston Farms. This program will explore whether Professor Laycock’s work successfully dismantled the irreparable injury rule or whether these recent Supreme Court opinions and their lower court progeny have breathed new life into the old doctrine. The program will also explore what insights Professor Laycock’s work might hold for lower courts and commentators grappling with the limits of these Supreme Court opinions. The program hopes to spark a broader conversation about the role of equity in a merged system.
Business Meeting at Program Conclusion.