  The phenomena of the spin-Hall effect, initially proposed over three decades
ago in the context of asymmetric Mott skew scattering, was revived recently by
the proposal of a possible intrinsic spin-Hall effect originating from a
strongly spin-orbit coupled band structure. This new proposal has generated an
extensive debate and controversy over the past two years. The purpose of this
workshop, held at the Asian Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics, was to
bring together many of the leading groups in this field to resolve such issues
and identify future challenges. We offer this short summary to clarify the now
settled issues on some of the more controversial aspects of the debate and help
refocus the research efforts in new and important avenues.
