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Full-Text Articles in Law
Beyond Bristol-Myers : Personal Jurisdiction Over Class Actions, Adam N. Steinman
Beyond Bristol-Myers : Personal Jurisdiction Over Class Actions, Adam N. Steinman
Faculty Scholarship
The Supreme Court's 2017 decision in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court threatens a sea change in the relationship between personal jurisdiction and aggregate litigation. The most crucial concern has been what the decision means for class actions. Must a court subject the claims of every unnamed class member to separate jurisdictional scrutiny? If so, it could be impossible for a plaintiff who sues in her home state to represent class members outside that state; instead, the Constitution would permit multi-state or nationwide class actions only in states where the defendant is subject to general jurisdiction. For claims against a …
Improving Predictability And Consistency In Class Action Tolling, Tanya Pierce
Improving Predictability And Consistency In Class Action Tolling, Tanya Pierce
Faculty Scholarship
Class action tolling means that when parties in a suit allege federal treatment, the individual claims of putative class members are tolled federal courts while the class action is pending. Commonly referred to as American Pipe tolling, this rule prevents duplicative litigation that would result if plaintiffs were required to intervene or file independent lawsuits to protect their interests while the class action was pending. Federal courts have long settled the application of American Pipe tolling in scenarios involving later-filed individual actions. In other scenarios, however, the application of American Pipe tolling has caused considerable uncertainty. This Article examines the …
To Say What The Law Is: Rules, Results, And The Dangers Of Inferential Stare Decisis, Adam N. Steinman
To Say What The Law Is: Rules, Results, And The Dangers Of Inferential Stare Decisis, Adam N. Steinman
Faculty Scholarship
Judicial decisions do more than resolve disputes. They are also crucial sources of prospective law, because stare decisis obligates future courts to follow those decisions. Yet there remains tremendous uncertainty about how we identify a judicial decision’s lawmaking content. Does stare decisis require future courts to follow the rules stated in a precedent-setting opinion? Or must future courts merely reconcile their decisions with the ultimate result of the precedent-setting case? Although it is widely assumed that a rule-based approach puts greater constraints on future courts, two recent Supreme Court decisions—Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes and Ashcroft v. Iqbal—turn this conventional …
Rethinking Civil Rico: The Vexing Problem Of Causation In Fraud-Based Claims Under 18 U.S.C. § 1962(C), Randy D. Gordon
Rethinking Civil Rico: The Vexing Problem Of Causation In Fraud-Based Claims Under 18 U.S.C. § 1962(C), Randy D. Gordon
Faculty Scholarship
To recover in a private action, the three-part structure of RICO demands proof of particularized crimes at two levels and civil standing to sue for those crimes. The interpretation and application of the standing requirement — which arises from the statute’s mandate that compensable injuries be caused “by reason of” acts of racketeering — have bedeviled courts and litigants for decades. Recent developments in class action law have exacerbated the problem. As more and more courts have rendered it nearly impossible to certify classes asserting state-law claims, class plaintiffs have turned to uniform federal laws like RICO. But civil RICO …