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Full-Text Articles in Law
Standing In Between Sexual Violence Victims And Access To Justice: The Limits Of Title Ix, Hannah Brenner Johnson
Standing In Between Sexual Violence Victims And Access To Justice: The Limits Of Title Ix, Hannah Brenner Johnson
Faculty Scholarship
Sexual violence proliferates across communities, generally, and is especially prevalent in places like colleges and universities. As quasi-closed systems, colleges and universities are governed by their own internal norms, policies, and federal laws, like Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which address how sex discrimination must be handled in institutions of higher education that are in receipt of federal funds. Title IX focuses on all facets of sex discrimination including reporting, investigation, adjudication, and prevention. When schools are accused of failing to adequately respond to reports of sexual misconduct on their campuses, Title IX has been interpreted by …
Aggregating Defendants, Greg Reilly
Aggregating Defendants, Greg Reilly
Faculty Scholarship
No procedural topic has garnered more attention in the past fifty years than the class action and aggregation of plaintiffs. Yet, almost nothing has been written about aggregating defendants. This topic is of increasing importance. Recent efforts by patent “trolls” and Bit- Torrent copyright plaintiffs to aggregate unrelated defendants for similar but independent acts of infringement have provoked strong opposition from defendants, courts, and even Congress. The visceral resistance to defendant aggregation is puzzling. The aggregation of similarly situated plaintiffs is seen as creating benefits for both plaintiffs and the judicial system. The benefits that justify plaintiff aggregation also seem …
Removing The Blindfold And Tipping The Scales: The Unintended Lesson Of Ashcroft V. Iqbal Is That Frivolous Lawsuits May Be Important To Our Nation, Kenneth S. Klein
Removing The Blindfold And Tipping The Scales: The Unintended Lesson Of Ashcroft V. Iqbal Is That Frivolous Lawsuits May Be Important To Our Nation, Kenneth S. Klein
Faculty Scholarship
This Article questions whether the gain of curbing perceived frivolous litigation is worth the cost of undermining the core civic value of neutrality of justice. In Ashcroft v. Iqbal, the Supreme Court weighed in on the public debate about frivolous litigation. The lqbal opinion is essentially a memorandum by the Supreme Court written to the trial judges of America, encouraging these judges to aggressively, indeed very aggressively, identify and dismiss potentially frivolous civil complaints. That leeway-wrapped mandate comes at a cost. A cornerstone of our civic philosophy is that the judicial branch, as a general proposition, is a neutral …
Is Ashcroft V. Iqbal The Death (Finally) Of The “Historical Test” For Interpreting The Seventh Amendment?, Kenneth S. Klein
Is Ashcroft V. Iqbal The Death (Finally) Of The “Historical Test” For Interpreting The Seventh Amendment?, Kenneth S. Klein
Faculty Scholarship
There is the possibility that the recent Supreme Court decision of Ashcroft v. Iqbal finally will be the necessary impetus to revisit one of the more bizarre but enduring canards of American jurisprudence -- the way we interpret the Seventh Amendment's preservation of a right to a jury trial in federal civil litigation. The Seventh Amendment provides that "[i]n suits at common law ... the right of trial by jury shall be preserved." To this day, the way we apply the Seventh Amendment-in other words, what we interpret to be the constitutional intent and mandate of our Founders-is to postulate …
Ashcroft V. Iqbal Crashes Rule 8 Pleading Standards On To Unconstitutional Shores, Kenneth S. Klein
Ashcroft V. Iqbal Crashes Rule 8 Pleading Standards On To Unconstitutional Shores, Kenneth S. Klein
Faculty Scholarship
Since the early nineteenth century, the interpretation of the Seventh Amendment preservation of the right to a civil trial by jury has remained static and become increasingly anachronistic. Over the same period of time, the evolution of modern civil procedure pleading standards has been on a collision course with that interpretation. The penultimate 2007 Supreme Court opinion in this field, Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, raised the specter of an impending impasse between pleading standards and the Seventh Amendment. The 2009 opinion in Ashcroft v. Iqbal is the point of impact. While the Iqbal opinion fails to even acknowledge …