Society

FSI researchers work to understand continuity and change in societies as they confront their problems and opportunities. This includes the implications of migration and human trafficking. What happens to a society when young girls exit the sex trade? How do groups moving between locations impact societies, economies, self-identity and citizenship? What are the ethnic challenges faced by an increasingly diverse European Union? From a policy perspective, scholars also work to investigate the consequences of security-related measures for society and its values.

The Europe Center reflects much of FSI’s agenda of investigating societies, serving as a forum for experts to research the cultures, religions and people of Europe. The Center sponsors several seminars and lectures, as well as visiting scholars.

Societal research also addresses issues of demography and aging, such as the social and economic challenges of providing health care for an aging population. How do older adults make decisions, and what societal tools need to be in place to ensure the resulting decisions are well-informed? FSI regularly brings in international scholars to look at these issues. They discuss how adults care for their older parents in rural China as well as the economic aspects of aging populations in China and India.

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Sponsored by Freeman Spogli Institute for International StudiesShorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford China Program, and Center for East Asian Studies.

Prompted by the government’s introduction of the Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation (Amendment) Bill 2019, Hong Kong has been rocked by intense unrest, its most volatile since the handover in 1997. Millions have taken to the streets and violence has escalated on both sides. Beijing has likened Hong Kong’s demonstrations to the “color revolutions,” and has also condemned the disruptions as “near-terrorist acts.”

In this critical time, our conference will explore questions such as: What are the root causes of Hong Kong’s unremitting protests? Why has this extradition bill generated such intense and widespread reactions? Facing massive governance challenges, what will be the future of Hong Kong? Is there a viable future for “one country, two systems”? How should the U.S. and the international community best respond?

 

Speakers

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The Honorable Anson Chan retired as the Chief Secretary for Administration of the Hong Kong Government in 2001, after nearly forty years of service.  As Chief Secretary, she headed the 190,000-strong civil service.  She was the first woman and the first Chinese to hold the second-highest governmental position in Hong Kong.  During her career in the public service, she was responsible, amongst other things, for development of Hong Kong's economic infrastructure including the planning and construction of Hong Kong's new international airport, which opened in July 1998; port expansion and deregulation of the telecommunications market. Mrs. Chan is Convenor of Hong Kong 2020 - a think tank concerned with transparent and accountable Government, universal suffrage and protection of rights and freedoms enshrined in the "one country, two systems" concept that applies to Hong Kong.

Honors & Awards: 
-  Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (1992) 
-  Grand Bauhinia Medal (1999): the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s highest honor 
-  Honorary Dame Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George (GCMG) conferred by Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain (2002) 
-  Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award, Tufts University (2005) 
-  Chevalier of the National Order of the Legion d’Honneur conferred by the President of France (2008) 
-  American Chamber’s Women of Influence Lifetime Achievement Award (2016) 
-  O’Connor Justice Prize Honoree (2018) 
-  Justice of the Peace

 

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Harry Harding is University Professor and Professor of Public Policy at the University of Virginia, where he was the founding dean of the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy.  He is also Distinguished Adjunct Professor at National Chengchi University in Taiwan. Professor Harding has previously held appointments at Swarthmore College, Stanford University, The Brookings Institution, as Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, and visiting appointments at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the University of Hong Kong.  A specialist on U.S.-China relations, his major publications on that topic include “Has U.S. China Policy Failed?” and A Fragile Relationship: The United States and China Since 1972. He is now writing a sequel, A Fraught Relationship: The United States and China from Partners to Competitors.

 

 

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David M. Lampton is Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow and Research Scholar at FSI and affiliated with Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC).  He also is the Hyman Professor of China Studies and Director of the China Studies Program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Emeritus.  Professor Lampton's current book project is focused on the development of high-speed railways from southern China to Singapore.  He is the author of a dozen books and monographs, including Following the Leader: Ruling China, from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping  (University of California Press, 2014, and second edition 2019) and The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money, and Minds (University of California Press, 2008).  He has testified at multiple congressional and commission sessions and published numerous articles, essays, book reviews, and opinion pieces in many venues, popular and academic, in both the western world and in Chinese-speaking societies, including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The American Political Science Review, The China Quarterly, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. 

 

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Jean Oi

Jean C. Oi is the William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics in the Department of Political Science and a Senior Fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University.  She directs the China Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center in FSI and is the founding Lee Shau Kee Director of the Stanford Center at Peking University.  Professor Oi has published extensively on political economy and the process of reform in China.  Recent books include Zouping Revisited:  Adaptive Governance in a Chinese County, co-edited with Steven Goldstein (2018); and Challenges in the Process of China's Urbanization, co-edited with Karen Eggleston and Yiming Wang (2017).  Professor Oi also has an edited volume with Tom Fingar, Fateful Decisions: Choices that will Shape China's Future, Stanford University Press, forthcoming.  Recent articles include "Unpacking the Patterns of Corporate Restructuring during China's SOE Reform," co-authored with Xiaojun Li, Economic and Political Studies (2018); and “Reflections on Forty Years of Rural Reform,” in Jacques deLisle and Avery Goldstein, eds., To Get Rich is Glorious: Challenges Facing China’s Economic Reform and Opening at Forty, Brookings, 2019.  Current research is on fiscal reform and local government debt, continuing SOE reforms, and China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

 

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Ming Sing is associate professor, Division of Social Science, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.  His research interests include the comparative study of democracy and democratization, political culture, civil society, quality of life, and Hong Kong politics. He obtained his D.Phil from Oxford University in sociology and has been the author or editor of four books and over thirty articles. His refereed publications can be found in the Journal of Politics, Journal of Democracy, Democratization, Government and Opposition, and Social Indicators Research, among others. He has been working on a book comparing Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement and Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement.  He has also been an active commentator on Hong Kong politics, whose comments have been solicited by local and international media including BBC, CNN, Bloomberg, Financial Times, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal. He was awarded the Fulbright Scholarship for visiting the University of California, San Diego in 2007, and the POSCO Visiting Fellowship by the East-West Center, University of Hawaii in 2010.

Attendees should enter the campus via Galvez Street and park at the Galvez Lot or other designated, paid visitor parking. See also Stanford’s parking mapNo parking at the Stanford Oval is allowed.

For a summary, video, audio, photos and transcripts of the event, please see the following webpage:

https://aparc.fsi.stanford.edu/news/hong-kong-turmoil-former-chief-secretary-and-scholars-discuss-causes-implications-and-potential

The Honorable Anson Chan <br><i> GBM, GCMG, CBE, JP; Former Chief Secretary of Hong Kong SAR (1993-2001); member of Legislative Council of Hong Kong (2007-2008) </i><br><br>
Harry Harding <br><i>University Professor and Professor of Public Policy, Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, University of Virginia</i><br><br>
David M. Lampton <br><i>Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), Stanford University</i><br><br>
Jean C. Oi (Moderator) <br><i>Director, Stanford China Program; William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics, Stanford University</i><br><br>
Ming Sing <br><i>Associate Professor, Division of Social Science, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology</i><br><br>
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After "a longtime partnership with Stanford University's Rural Education Action Program," OneSight is expanding into Rwanda and Brazil to continue our practice of providing free eyeglasses to those in critical need, explains author Julian Wyllie. 

"OneSight builds eye-examination centers and helps train ophthalmologists in dozens of countries and is expanding into new areas including Rwanda and Brazil."

 

Read the full story here.

Learn more about REAP's vision care research here. 

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Speaker Bio:

Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), the Director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, and the Mosbacher Director of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL).  He is also a professor by courtesy in the Department of Political Science. He was previously at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University, where he was the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy and director of SAIS' International Development program.

Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues relating to questions concerning democratization and international political economy. His book, The End of History and the Last Man, was published by Free Press in 1992 and has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His most recent book is Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy.

Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation, and a twice a member of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University. He served as a member of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004.

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Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy
Research Affiliate at The Europe Center
Professor by Courtesy, Department of Political Science
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Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, and a professor (by courtesy) of Political Science.

Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues in development and international politics. His 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His book In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir will be published in fall 2026.

Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation, and of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and from 2001-2010 he was Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004. He is editor-in-chief of American Purpose, an online journal.

Dr. Fukuyama holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai University (Japan), Aarhus University (Denmark), the Pardee Rand Graduate School, and Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland). He is a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Trustees of Freedom House, and the Board of the Volcker Alliance. He is a fellow of the National Academy for Public Administration, a member of the American Political Science Association, and of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.

(October 2025)

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The Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), the Director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy, and the Mosbacher Director of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development
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Seminar recording: https://youtu.be/fYUK-ALGqAE

 

Abstract:  Russian influence operations during the 2016 US elections, and the investigations that followed, revealed the broad scope of Russian political warfare against Western democracies. Since then, Russian operations have targeted the UK, France, Germany, Ukraine, and others. Other state and non-state actors, motivated by politics or profit, have also learned and adapted the Kremlin’s tool-kit. With the 2020 elections a year away, what have we learned about foreign information operations? How has the transatlantic community responded and what are the threats we are likely to face?  Drawing on extensive research on transatlantic relations, disinformation, and Russian foreign policy, Dr. Polyakova will discuss the state of policy options to address disinformation, analyze Russian intentions, and highlight emerging threats.

 

Speaker’s Biography:

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Alina Polyakova is the founding director of the Project on Global Democracy and Emerging Technology and a fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, where she leads the Foreign Policy program’s Democracy Working Group. She is also adjunct professor of European studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. Her work examines Russian political warfare, European populism, digital authoritarianism, and the implications of emerging technologies to democracies. Polyakova's book, "The Dark Side of European Integration" (Ibidem-Verlag and Columbia University Press, 2015) analyzed the rise of far-right political parties in Europe.  She holds a master’s and doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, and a bachelor's in economics and sociology with highest honors from Emory University. 

Alina Polyakova Director, Project on Global Democracy and Emerging Technology The Brookings Institution
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Gi-Wook Shin
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Tension and discord in Japan-South Korea relations are nothing new, but the unfortunate, intensifying conflict between the two countries — a manifestation of right-wing Japanese nationalism and left-wing South Korean nationalism — seems headed toward a collision course. To understand the escalating friction between Tokyo and Seoul one must recognize the unique characteristics of Korean nationalism, and particularly its historical origins, development, and political role in shaping Korean attitudes toward Japan.

This is the focus of my article The Perils of Populist Nationalism, published in the September 2019 issue of the Korean magazine Shindonga (New East Asia). In this piece, which has received much attention in South Korea, I analyze the friction between Seoul and Tokyo and explain the attitude among Koreans toward Japan in contrast to their different attitude toward China. The anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea was forged amidst the rise of modern Japan. Through the experience of Japanese colonial rule, Korean nationalism took on an exclusionary form that emphasized one’s ancestry and the ethnic purity of the Korean people. The current tension between Seoul and Tokyo is rooted in this Korean nationalist sentiment.

It is time South Korea moved beyond its psychological complex toward Japan and recognized that ethnic nationalism is obsolete. Korean intellectuals, I argue, must play a critical role in a sustained effort to cultivate rational liberalism and prevent the excesses of nationalism if South Korea is to become a more open society — one that, in Popperian terms, accepts criticism and rejects a monopoly on truth.

The complete English translation of my article is now available.

Download Now >>

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South Korean protesters hold a placard reading "No Abe" during a rally against Japan's decision to remove South Korea from a "whitelist" of trusted trade partners, in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul on August 2, 2019.
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Liberal democracy is being challenged by populist nationalist leaders and they’re fanning the flames of identity politics. Instead of uniting over a shared sense of humanity, people are identifying in narrower ways based on things like religion, race, ethnicity, and gender. Francis Fukuyama , FSI Senior Fellow and CDDRL Mosbacher Director, believes that in order to support democracy, we must inculcate a greater sense of dignity into society. Fukuyama speaks with Elliot Gerson, executive vice president at the Aspen Institute. Listen here.

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Abstract:

High bureaucratic transaction costs can make it impossible for individuals to claim welfare benefits. Instead, these costs make individuals dependent on intermediaries who facilitate access to welfare. Especially in contexts of weak and corrupt policy implementation, politically motivated intermediaries demand political loyalty in return for their assistance, a practice known as clientelism. Although intermediaries may be efficient and even compensate for deficiencies in state capacity, they can also have long-run consequences for individuals' political autonomy and capacity to hold governments accountable. As a result, instead of promoting autonomous political participation, the pursuit of social welfare benefits through intermediaries can intensify ties of dependency. Worryingly, this research suggests that studying distributive outcomes without understanding mediating institutions may produce misleading conclusions. However, an important implication of this theory is that vicious markets of mediation can be weakened by reducing the costs that citizens face in obtaining welfare benefits directly from the state.

 

Speaker Bio:

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Tesalia is a Post Postdoctoral Scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at Stanford University. Starting fall 2020, she will be joining the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Merced as Assistant Professor. She completed her PhD in Political Science at MIT. Tesalia is also a research affiliate at the MIT Governance Lab.

Her research is in comparative political behavior, with a particular focus on how citizens make demands on the state. Her book-project, titled “Intermediaries of the State: Bureaucratic Transaction Costs of Claiming Welfare in Mexico” explores how bureaucratic transaction costs prevent individuals from directly claiming welfare benefits. Instead, these costs make citizens dependent on clientelist brokers and intermediaries, who demand political favors in return for access.

 

Encina Hall, E112 616 Jane Stanford Way Stanford, CA 94305-6055  
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CDDRL Postdoctoral Scholar, 2019-20
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Tesalia Rizzo holds a Ph.D. in Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her research focuses on the demand and supply side of political mediation. Specifically, on how political (formal, informal or clientelist) intermediaries shape citizens’ attitudes and political engagement. She also works with non-governmental practitioners in Mexico to develop and test policies that disincentivize citizen reliance on clientelist and corrupt avenues of engaging with government and strengthen citizen demand for accountability. Her work with Mexican practitioners was awarded the 2017 Innovation in Transparency Award given by the Mexican National Institute for Access to Information (INAI). She is also a Research Fellow at MIT GOV/LAB and the Political Methodology Lab, at MIT. She is a graduate of the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) in Mexico City. Prior to arriving at Stanford, she was a pre-doctoral fellow at the Center for US-Mexican Studies at University of California, San Diego and will join the Political Science Faculty at the University of California, Merced in 2020.

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Post Postdoctoral Scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at Stanford University
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Political polarization is tearing at the seams of democracies around the world—from Brazil, India, and Kenya, to Poland, Turkey, and the United States. Drawing on his new co-edited volume (with Andrew O’Donohue), Democracies Divided: The Global Challenge of Political Polarization, Carnegie Endowment scholar Thomas Carothers will analyze the global spread of political polarization, drawing on examples from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and North America. Questions to be addressed include: Why has polarization come to a boil in so many places in recent years? What are its consequences? Once democracies have become deeply divided, what can they do to restore at least some consensus? Is polarization in the United States similar to or different from polarization elsewhere?

 

Speaker Bio:

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Thomas Carothers
Thomas Carothers is senior vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace where he oversees all of the Endowment’s research programs and directs the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program. Widely recognized as a leading authority on democratization and international support for democracy, he has worked on democracy and governance assistance projects around the world for many public and private organizations. He is the author or editor of numerous critically-acclaimed books and reports as well as many articles in prominent journals and newspapers. He has been a visiting faculty member at Oxford University, the Central European University, and Johns Hopkins SAIS. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School, the London School of Economics, and Harvard College.

Thomas Carothers Senior vice president for studies, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
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30 years ago, communist rule ended across central Europe in a dramatic series of events ranging from Solidarity's election triumph in Poland on 4 June 1989, through the ceremonial reburial of Imre Nagy in Budapest (with a fiery young student leader called Viktor Orbán demanding the withdrawal of all Soviet troops), to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. Timothy Garton Ash witnessed these events and described them memorably in his book The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of '89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Prague and Berlin.

Now he has revisited all these countries, to explore the long term consequences of the revolutions and subsequent transitions. What went right? More pressingly: What went wrong? For today, Orbán is presiding over the systematic dismantling of democracy in Hungary, the Law and Justice party in Poland is trying to follow his example, the prime minister of the Czech Republic is an oligarch and former secret police informer, while a xenophobic populist party, the AfD, is flourishing in the former East Germany. In this lecture, Garton Ash will explore the peculiar character of populism in post-communist Europe, and the considerable forces of resistance to it.

 

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Timothy Garton Ash is Professor of European Studies, Oxford University, and Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford. He is the author of ten books of contemporary history, including The File: A Personal History, History of the Present, In Europe's Name: Germany and the Divided Continent, and, most recently, Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World. His commentaries appear regularly in the Guardian, and are widely syndicated.

 

Co-Sponsors: Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, The Europe Center, Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies and the Hoover Institution.

Light refreshments will be served after the lecture, and copies of The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of '89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Prague and Berlin, will be on sale

This event is free and open to the public.

 

Timothy Garton Ash <i>Professor of European Studies, Oxford University and Senior Fellow, Hoover Institute, Stanford University</i>
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On August 26, Judge Thad Balkman delivered a $572 million judgment against pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson for the company’s role in fueling the opioid epidemic in Oklahoma. In the discussion that follows, Stanford Law Professors Michelle Mello and Nora Freeman Engstrom discuss the decision and how other cases tied to the national opioid crisis are developing.

The Oklahoma decision took many onlookers by surprise. How did the case unfold? And what did Judge Balkman find? On Monday, Cleveland County District Judge Thad Balkman of Oklahoma issued a judgment that capped off a long and closely-scrutinized trial wherein the Oklahoma Attorney General faced off against Johnson & Johnson (J&J), claiming that J&J contributed to the opioid epidemic that has devastated the state of Oklahoma.

 

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Stanford Law Professors Michelle Mello and Nora Freeman Engstrom

To understand the verdict, a bit of background is helpful. When Oklahoma initially sued, it cast the net broadly, asserting claims against several defendants under several causes of action.  Certain defendants (namely, Purdue and Teva) chose to settle rather than roll the dice at trial. (Purdue, the maker of OxyContin, agreed to pay Oklahoma $270 million and Teva, one of the world’s leading providers of generic drugs, $85 million; neither admitted wrongdoing.)  Further, over time, Oklahoma’s various causes of action got winnowed down to the singular claim that J&J had created a public nuisance by aggressively and deceptively marketing opioid products to Oklahoma’s doctors and patients.  This posture meant that Oklahoma’s victory at trial was far from a foregone conclusion, as public nuisance claims can be very hard to prove, particularly in cases that relate to dangerous products.

With that table set, the trial began on May 28, 2019.  In a crowded courtroom in Cleveland County, it stretched on for nearly seven weeks and featured dozens of witnesses and more than 800 exhibits. The trial was a bench trial, meaning there was no jury, but there was a written opinion explaining the judge’s decision.  Judge Balkman’s 42-page opinion offers a cogent summary of the evidence and governing law and, broadly, vindicates Oklahoma’s litigation strategy. The opinion finds that J&J engaged in a deceptive marketing campaign designed to convince Oklahoma doctors and the public that opioids were safe and effective for the long-term treatment of chronic, non-malignant pain. Further, this “false, misleading, and dangerous marketing” caused “exponentially increasing rates of addiction [and] overdose death,” which ravaged the Sooner State. The picture Judge Balkman draws is stark and, for J&J, devastating.

Are individuals suing drug companies too? Are there class action cases that are relevant?

There are some suits by individuals, but we don’t believe that’s where the big money damages—and the real social impact of the litigation—will be.  More important is the pending federal multi-district litigation (MDL), which consolidates nearly 2,000 individual federal lawsuits brought by cities, counties, municipalities, and tribal governments in a single action before Judge Dan Polster in Cleveland, Ohio. Additionally, 48 states have initiated separate litigation, with a lineup of claims and defendants similar to the MDL.

Does this win for Oklahoma mean these other plaintiffs have an easy road ahead?

Not easy, but potentially easier. The Oklahoma case is what we call a bellwether. Like the ram that leads the other sheep this way or that, the bellwether trial doesn’t control the path of future litigation. But it does go first, and it helps to indicate trends.

As a bellwether, the big verdict here is very reassuring to the many states, counties, municipalities, and tribes suing opioid makers, distributors, and retailers, and it is, correspondingly, very disturbing for those who made and sold opioids to the American public.  The verdict suggests that this litigation has legs, and that judges and juries may be willing to pin blame not just on Purdue, the maker of OxyContin, but on others who played an arguably less central role in fueling this public health crisis.

What is striking is how damning Judge Balkman’s factual conclusions about J&J’s conduct are, and how similar they are to the allegations made against other opioid manufacturers in other cases.  All the things he objected to regarding J&J’s marketing practices are things that others, too, allegedly have done. Some of them are things that multiple companies banded together to do. Plaintiffs’ attorneys should be feeling pretty confident about their chances of persuading other courts that those practices are problematic.

Is Oklahoma free to use the award as it wishes? Will the state share some of the award with the people who died or suffered in the opioid crisis (if the decision is upheld on appeal)?

The damages, in this case, are intended to fund Oklahoma’s “nuisance abatement plan.”  That’s the remedy in a public nuisance case: The defendant has to pay to clean up the mess it made. In this case, Oklahoma provided a detailed plan laying out what would be needed to abate the opioid problem in the state. The costs added up to $572 million for the first year, and that’s what the judge awarded—not the $17 billion Oklahoma sought for a multi-year abatement effort.

The plan specifies that the money will be used for opioid use disorder screening, prevention and treatment ($292 million), housing and other services for those in recovery ($32 million), continuing medical education programs ($108 million), a pain management benefit program ($103 million), treatment of neonatal abstinence syndrome ($21 million), and other services.  Individuals won’t be direct recipients of the funds, though they may receive the services funded.

Legally, what happens next?

J&J has vowed to appeal the “flawed” Oklahoma judgment, and we expect that the judgment will be appealed, first to Oklahoma’s intermediate, and then, likely, to its supreme, court.  More immediately, though, attention will turn from Oklahoma to Ohio.  The first bellwether trial in the MDL, involving claims from Ohio’s Cuyahoga and Summit counties, is scheduled to begin on October 21.

Even as they prepare for trial, however, lawyers for both plaintiffs and defendants are also, no doubt, continuing to work toward reaching a broad and encompassing settlement.  When Judge Polster was first assigned the MDL back in January 2018, he made no bones about his desire to do “something meaningful to abate this crisis”—and to do it quickly.  It hasn’t been easy to execute on that, which isn’t surprising given the unprecedented magnitude and complexity of the litigation.

Still, we expect that, sooner or later, the opioid litigation will settle.  Indeed, even as we write, news is breaking that Purdue and the Sacklers may be in the midst of a negotiation whereby Purdue would declare bankruptcy and the Sacklers would contribute a cash payment of roughly $4.5 billion-plus relinquish ownership of the company, in return for peace with plaintiffs.

But even forging a settlement involving just those two entities is tricky—and forging a broader settlement will be exponentially harder for a number of reasons.  One is that any truly global agreement needs to pass muster with a range of defendants, some of whom have comparatively shallow pockets, and all of whom sold (or made or distributed) different products, at different times, in different quantities, in different states.  And, on the other side of the table, any settlement agreement needs to get buy-in from both those plaintiffs in the MDL and also state attorneys’ general, who have their own distinct set of priorities and interests relating to their separate lawsuits.  Further, because only a small proportion of eligible cities and counties have joined the MDL to date, any global settlement needs to somehow—equitably but firmly—close the courthouse door on those potential future plaintiffs.  None of this will be easy to accomplish.  But whenever new information reduces uncertainty about how courts would resolve a legal dispute, settlement becomes more likely—and, here, the Oklahoma verdict makes a significant contribution.

 

Nora Freeman Engstrom, Professor of Law and Deane F. Johnson Faculty Scholar, is a nationally-recognized expert in tort law, legal ethics, and complex litigation. Her work explores the day-to-day operation of the tort system—particularly its interaction with alternative compensation mechanisms. Michelle Mello, Professor of Law and Professor of Health Research and Policy (School of Medicine), is a leading empirical health scholar and the author of more than 150 book chapters and articles, including “Drug Companies’ Liability for the Opioid Epidemic,” recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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