Zimmerman looks forward to tackling “important, emergent issues in law”
Professor Adam Zimmerman was recently elected as one of the newest members of the American Law Institute, bringing the number of current USC Gould School of Law professors among the ALI membership to 15.
Zimmerman, who teaches Tort Law, Civil Procedure, Administrative Law and Mass Tort Law, says he’s honored to join the ranks of the ALI as part of the latest class of distinguished lawyers, scholars, and judges and looks forward to helping the nonprofit ALI fulfill its mission in its 100th year.
“The ALI takes on very important, emergent issues in law, with the aim of providing guidance to improve consistency and fairness in the administration of justice,” he states. “In my field of expertise, this includes recent high-profile efforts on the Third Restatement of Torts and in complex litigation.”
Zimmerman is eager to join ALI’s work on civil adjudication reform, an area where he sees the greatest amount of court innovation – from novel efforts to address housing issues before they reach courts, to growing experiments with artificial intelligence and remote proceedings over Zoom.
“These kinds of innovations, which almost reimagine courts as administrative agencies and service providers, carry the potential to improve access to justice, but also carry new risks,” he says.
Zimmerman says he’s particularly excited by the ALI’s High-Volume Civil Adjudication project, a reform effort focused on a large number of high-stakes, low-dollar-value civil claims that dominate state courts. Defendants without resources in these cases are often forced to appear without counsel, he says.
“These cases that include debt collection, evictions and child support, comprise the majority of state court cases and impact the lives of millions of Americans, particularly women and people of color.”
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