As part of NCJI’s and the Rhode Center’s May 1-2, 2026 Academic Symposium, Secrecy and Transparency in Civil Litigation,” law professors throughout the country authored original academic research papers exploring aspects of the Symposium topic. The authors presented the six draft papers (during Panels 5 and 6) at the Symposium. Ultimately, the final papers are published in law reviews.
Panel 1: Setting the Table
[Sealed Document]: An Empirical Study of Sealing Orders in the Federal Courts by Nora Freeman Engstrom, David Freeman Engstrom, Jonah B. Gelbach, Austin Peters, Matthew Brundage, Othman Bensouda Koraichi & Amy Cass
Secrecy by Stipulation by Nora Freeman Engstrom, David Freeman Engstrom, Jonah B. Gelbach, Austin Peters, & Aaron Schaffer-Neitz
Shedding Light on Secret Settlements: An Empirical Study of California’s STAND Act by David Freeman Engstrom, Nora Freeman Engstrom, Jonah B. Gelbach, Austin Peters, & Garrett M. Wen
Panel 4: Judicial Obligations
State Shadow Dockets by Hon. Rebecca Frank Dallet & Matt Woleske
Doe v. Madison, Wisconsin Supreme Court
Panel 5: Institutional Design and the Architecture of Secrecy
Justice in a Walled Garden: Structural Secrecy and Adjudicatory Data Access by Charlotte S. Alexander, Jeffrey R. Boles, Nathan Dahlberg, Leora F. Eisenstadt
Judicial Miseducation From Litigation Secrecy by Seth Katsuya Endo
Protective Orders and Sealing in Federal Courts by Elizabeth A. Rowe and Lauren M. Grohowski
Panel 6: Digging Deeper on the Everyday Machinery of Secrecy
Secrecy in Trust Litigation by Reid Kress Weisbord, David Horton, and Naomi Cahn
Pseudonymous Litigation by Eugene Volokh
Sealing as Self-Dealing by Dustin B. Benham