Critical Trusts and Estates Conference

The following announcement is posted at the request of Prof. Carla Spivack:

The Sixth Biennial Critical Trusts and Estates Conference will take place at the University of Richmond School of Law this coming October 9-10.  Started in 2012 at Oklahoma City University School of Law, this conference gathers scholars and practitioners from around the world to discuss the myriad ways succession law not only distributes wealth, but also constitutes social relations, identities, and hierarchies across generations.

We welcome papers that interrogate the role of inheritance, trusts, and estates in shaping and sustaining structures of power, including but not limited to those organized around race, gender, sexuality, class, disability, immigration, and nation. We are particularly interested in work that explores how wealth transmission both reflects and produces economic and power relations and that draws on a range of critical traditions such as feminist legal theory, critical race theory, LatCrit, queer theory, disability studies, postcolonial theory, and related approaches.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to): the racialized and gendered dimensions of inheritance and family formation; the relationship between succession law and colonialism or global inequality; the role of trusts and estates in climate governance and intergenerational justice; and the ways private wealth structures interact with public law and democratic institutions.  We also welcome papers addressing today’s trusts and estates “hot topics,” like the reformation of revocable trusts, the policy/history of testamentary freedom, and trust privacy/secrecy.    

At this point, we are asking for expressions of interest to be sent to: atait@richmond.edu and cspiv@albanylaw.edu.  A call for abstracts will follow.