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Full-Text Articles in Law
Politics, Identity, And Class Certification On The U.S. Courts Of Appeals, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang
Politics, Identity, And Class Certification On The U.S. Courts Of Appeals, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang
Sean Farhang
This article draws on novel data and presents the results of the first empirical analysis of how potentially salient characteristics of Court of Appeals judges influence precedential lawmaking on class certification under Rule 23. We find that the partisan composition of the panel (measured by the party of the appointing president) has a very strong association with certification outcomes, with all-Democratic panels having more than double the certification rate of all-Republican panels in precedential cases. We also find that the presence of one African American on a panel, and the presence of two females (but not one), is associated with …
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
Randy D. Gordon
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 …
Superiority As Unity, Jay Tidmarsh
Superiority As Unity, Jay Tidmarsh
Jay Tidmarsh
One of Professor Redish’s many important contributions to legal scholarship is his recent work on class actions. Grounding his argument in the theory of democratic accountability that has been at the centerpiece of all his work, Professor Redish suggests that, in nearly all instances, class actions violate the individual autonomy of litigants and should not be used by courts. This Essay, prepared for a festschrift in honor of Professor Redish, begins from the opposite premise: that class actions should be grounded in the notion of social utility rather than autonomy so that class actions should be used whenever they achieve …
Cy Pres And The Optimal Class Action, Jay Tidmarsh
Cy Pres And The Optimal Class Action, Jay Tidmarsh
Jay Tidmarsh
This Article, prepared for a symposium on class actions, examines the problem of cy pres relief through the lens of ensuring that class actions have an optimal claim structure and class membership. It finds that the present cy pres doctrine does little to advance the creation of optimal class actions, and may do some harm to achieving that goal. The Article then proposes an alternative “nudge” to induce putative class counsel to structure class actions in an optimal way: set attorneys’ fees so that counsel is compensated through a combination of an hourly market rate and a percentage of the …
Improving Predictability And Consistency In Class Action Tolling, Tanya Pierce
Improving Predictability And Consistency In Class Action Tolling, Tanya Pierce
Tanya Pierce
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 …
Resurrecting Trial By Statistics, Jay Tidmarsh
Resurrecting Trial By Statistics, Jay Tidmarsh
Jay Tidmarsh
“Trial by statistics” was a means by which a court could resolve a large number of aggregated claims: a court could try a random sample of claim, and extrapolate the average result to the remainder. In Wal-Mart, Inc. v. Dukes, the Supreme Court seemingly ended the practice at the federal level, thus removing from judges a tool that made mass aggregation more feasible. After examining the benefits and drawbacks of trial by statistics, this Article suggests an alternative that harnesses many of the positive features of the technique while avoiding its major difficulties. The technique is the “presumptive judgment”: a …
When Bad Guys Are Wearing White Hats, Catherine A. Rogers
When Bad Guys Are Wearing White Hats, Catherine A. Rogers
Catherine Rogers
Allegations of ethical misconduct by lawyers have all but completely overshadowed the substantive claims in the Chevron case. While both sides have been accused of flagrant wrongdoing, the charges against plaintiffs’ counsel appear to have captured more headlines and garnered more attention. The primary reason why the focus seems lopsided is that plaintiffs’ counsel were presumed to be the ones wearing white hats in this epic drama. This essay postulates that this seeming irony is not simply an example of personal ethical lapse, but in part tied to larger reasons why ethical violations are an occupational hazard for plaintiffs’ counsel …
Calibrating Participation: Reflections On Procedure Versus Procedural Justice, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch
Calibrating Participation: Reflections On Procedure Versus Procedural Justice, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch
Elizabeth Chamblee Burch
Class Certification’S Preclusive Effects, Kevin M. Clermont
Class Certification’S Preclusive Effects, Kevin M. Clermont
Kevin M. Clermont
In September 2010, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in the controversial Baycol litigation. The central question will be whether, subsequent to a denial of class certification, preclusion can prevent an absentee from seeking to certify another class action on a similar claim. This Essay answers that question in the affirmative, while warning that the preclusion is very limited in scope. It arrives at this answer by analogizing to the more established doctrine of jurisdiction to determine no jurisdiction: if a court’s finding of no jurisdiction over the subject matter or the person can preclude, then a finding of no authority …
Cy Pres And The Optimal Class Action, Jay Tidmarsh
Cy Pres And The Optimal Class Action, Jay Tidmarsh
Jay Tidmarsh
Prepared for a symposium on class actions, this Article examines the problem of cy pres relief in class actions through the lens of optimal claim structure and class membership. It finds that the present cy pres doctrine does little to advance the creation of optimal class actions, and that it may do some harm to achieving that goal. The Article then proposes an alternative “nudge” to induce putative class counsel to structure class actions in an optimal way: setting attorneys’ fees so that counsel is compensated through a combination of an hourly market rate and a percentage of the net …
Idea Class Actions After Wal-Mart V. Dukes, Mark C. Weber
Idea Class Actions After Wal-Mart V. Dukes, Mark C. Weber
Mark C. Weber
Wal-Mart v. Dukes overturned the certification of a class of a million and a half female employees alleging sex discrimination in Wal-Mart’s salary and promotion decisions. The Supreme Court ruled that the case did not satisfy the requirement that a class have a common question of law or fact, and said that the remedy sought was not the type of relief available under the portion of the class action rule permitting mandatory class actions. Over the last two years, courts have struggled with how to apply the ruling, especially how to apply it beyond its immediate context of employment discrimination …
Morphing Case Boundaries In Multidistrict Litigation Settlements, Margaret Thomas
Morphing Case Boundaries In Multidistrict Litigation Settlements, Margaret Thomas
Margaret S. Thomas
The boundaries of federal multidistrict litigation (MDL) are blurring, as district courts seek innovative ways to facilitate global settlements to resolve multijurisdictional, multidimensional, national mass torts. The techniques emerging from the district courts have mostly evaded appellate review and received little scholarly attention, but they raise important challenges to traditional understandings of the nature of MDL and complex litigation. This Article argues that factually similar cases proceeding in multiple court systems in mass tort disputes create a “federalism problem” for global settlements: global settlements typically benefit from oversight by a single judge, but often there is no single judge who …
Revisiting The Government As Plaintiff, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch
Revisiting The Government As Plaintiff, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch
Elizabeth Chamblee Burch
This is a symposium essay dedicated to the late Richard Nagareda and written in response to Adam S. Zimmerman's piece, The Corrective Justice State. As Professor Zimmerman recognizes, the debate over governments acting as plaintiffs and “regulating by deal” has shifted from initial questions over whether litigation produces the best public policy and whether executive officials are acting within the scope of their authority to how government actors should pursue and allocate settlements. Yet, as this first wave of controversy suggests, the slate upon which executive officials currently write is neither clean nor uncontroversial. Instead, this new debate is playing …
Future Conduct And The Limits Of Class-Action Settlements, James Grimmelmann
Future Conduct And The Limits Of Class-Action Settlements, James Grimmelmann
James Grimmelmann
This Article identifies a new and previously unrecognized trend in class-action settlements: releases for the defendant’s future conduct. Such releases, which hold the defendant harmless for wrongs it will commit in the future, are unusually dangerous to class members and to the public. Even more than the “future claims” familiar to class-action scholars, future-conduct releases pose severe informational problems for class members and for courts. Worse, they create moral hazard for the defendant, give it concentrated power, and thrust courts into a prospective planning role they are ill-equipped to handle.
Courts should guard against the dangers of future-conduct releases with …
Superiority As Unity, Jay Tidmarsh
Superiority As Unity, Jay Tidmarsh
Jay Tidmarsh
One of Professor Redish’s many important contributions to legal scholarship is his recent work on class actions. Grounding his argument in the theory of democratic accountability that has been at the centerpiece of all his work, Professor Redish suggests that, in nearly all instances, class actions violate the individual autonomy of litigants and should not be used by courts. This Essay begins from the opposite premise: that class actions should be grounded in the notion of social utility rather than autonomy so that class actions should be used whenever they achieve net social gains. This idea of “superiority” presents some …
Adequately Representing Groups, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch
Adequately Representing Groups, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch
Elizabeth Chamblee Burch
Courts Should Apply A Relatively More Stringent Pleading Threshold To Class Actions, Matthew Lawrence
Courts Should Apply A Relatively More Stringent Pleading Threshold To Class Actions, Matthew Lawrence
Matthew B. Lawrence
Adequacy Of Representation In Argentina: Federal Supreme Court’S Case Law, Bills Pending Before Congress And The Preliminary Draft Of A New Civil Code, Francisco Verbic
Adequacy Of Representation In Argentina: Federal Supreme Court’S Case Law, Bills Pending Before Congress And The Preliminary Draft Of A New Civil Code, Francisco Verbic
Francisco Verbic
The paper describes how adequacy of representation has recently arrived to Argentina’s legal system in the field of representative litigation. First of all, in the FederalSupreme Court’s case law. Then, in some bills which are nowadays pending before Congress. Lastly, in the Preliminary Draft of a new Civil Code recently announced by the President and the Chief Justice of the Federal Supreme Court. I take a critical approach towards the issue, particularly because of the little attention paid to such a relevant aspect of representative proceedings
Financiers As Monitors In Aggregate Litigation, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch
Financiers As Monitors In Aggregate Litigation, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch
Elizabeth Chamblee Burch
This Article identifies a market-based solution for monitoring large-scale litigation that proceeds outside of Rule 23’s safeguards. Although class actions dominate the scholarly discussion of mass litigation, the ever-increasing restrictions on certifying a class mean that plaintiffs’ lawyers routinely rely on aggregate litigation (through multidistrict litigation and liberal joinder devices like Rules 20 and 42) to seek redress for group-wide harms. Despite sharing key features with its class-action counterpart, lik fe attenuated attorney-client relationships, attorney-client conflicts of interest, and high agency costs, no monitor exists in aggregate litigation. Informal group litigation not only lacks Rule 23’s judicial protections against attorney …
Consumer Class Actions In Argentina And Brazil. Comparative Analysis And Enforcement Of Foreign Judgments, Francisco Verbic
Consumer Class Actions In Argentina And Brazil. Comparative Analysis And Enforcement Of Foreign Judgments, Francisco Verbic
Francisco Verbic
No abstract provided.
Why Is The Highway Closed? The Unreasonable Restriction Imposed On The Legal Services Corporation Regarding Class Action Suits, Francisco Verbic
Why Is The Highway Closed? The Unreasonable Restriction Imposed On The Legal Services Corporation Regarding Class Action Suits, Francisco Verbic
Francisco Verbic
In this paper I discuss the prohibition imposed by the US Congress on the Legal Services Corporation regarding the use of class action suits to provide free legal assistance to the poor. I deal with the creation of the Legal Services Corporation in the US, the scope and advantages of class actionssuits (particularly in terms of access to justice), and the role this kind of procedure can play in a context of a deep economic crisis that have deepened the gap in access to the civil justice system. I argue that the aforementioned prohibition to use class actions is unreasonable …
Class Actions, Heightened Commonality, And Declining Access To Justice, A. Benjamin Spencer
Class Actions, Heightened Commonality, And Declining Access To Justice, A. Benjamin Spencer
A. Benjamin Spencer
A prerequisite to being certified as a class under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure is that there are “questions of law or fact common to the class.” Although this “commonality” requirement had heretofore been regarded as something that was easily satisfied, in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes the Supreme Court gave it new vitality by reading into it an obligation to identify among the class a common injury and common questions that are “central” to the dispute. Not only is such a reading of Rule 23’s commonality requirement unsupported by the text of the rule, but …
Procedural Adequacy, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch
Procedural Adequacy, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch
Elizabeth Chamblee Burch
This short piece responds to Jay Tidmarsh’s article, Rethinking Adequacy of Representation, 87 Texas Law Review 1137 (2009). I explore Professor Tidmarsh’s proposed “do no harm” approach to adequate representation in class actions from a procedural legitimacy perspective. I begin by considering the assumption underlying his alternative, namely that in any given class action both attorneys and class representatives tend to act as self-interested homo economicus and we must therefore tailor the adequacy requirement to curb self-interest only in so far as it makes class members worse off than they would be with individual litigation. Adopting the “do no harm” …
Switzerland, Samuel P. Baumgartner
Switzerland, Samuel P. Baumgartner
Samuel P. Baumgartner
Switzerland has the traditional Austro-German representative association procedures. Debate on adoption of other models, given the opportunity of the introduction of a first federal Code of Civil Procedure, reveals considerable cautious conservatism toward reform.
Procedural Justice In Nonclass Aggregation, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch
Procedural Justice In Nonclass Aggregation, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch
Elizabeth Chamblee Burch
Nonclass aggregate litigation is risky for plaintiffs: it falls into the gray area between individual litigation and certified class actions. Although scholars have formulated procedural protections for both extremes, the unique danger and allure posed by nonclass aggregation has been undertheorized, leaving mass tort claimants with inadequate safeguards. When hallmark features of mass torts include attenuated attorney-client relationships, numerous litigants, and the demise of adversarial legalism, the attorney-client relationship itself becomes another bargaining chip in the exchange of rights. This Article takes the initial steps toward advancing a cohesive theory of procedural justice in nonclass aggregation by exposing the problem …
An Historical Analysis Of The Binding Effect Of Class Suits, Geoffrey C. Hazard, John L. Gedid, Stephen Sowle
An Historical Analysis Of The Binding Effect Of Class Suits, Geoffrey C. Hazard, John L. Gedid, Stephen Sowle
John L. Gedid
No abstract provided.