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The Democratic (Il)Legitimacy Of Assembly-Line Litigation, Jessica Steinberg, Colleen F. Shanahan, Anna E. Carpenter, Alyx Mark

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In response to Daniel Wilf-Townsend’s Assembly-Line Plaintiffs we take a panoramic picture of state civil courts, and debt cases in particular, and name specific features of the courts that must be taken into account in crafting reform prescriptions. In doing so, we question both the democratic legitimacy of debt collection courts and the adequacy of incremental reform that targets the structure of litigation. Part I contributes two critical components to Wilf-Townsend’s rich description of consumer debt cases: pervasive intersectional inequality among pro se defendants and a record of fraud among top filers. We add a sharper focus on the racial, …