Law Commons^™

Civil Rights, Access To Counsel, And Injunctive Class Actions In The United States, Maureen Carroll

Book Chapters

According to a familiar story about class actions in the United States, aggregation promotes access to counsel by increasing the amount of money from which counsel fees can be taken. Courts usually award class counsel a percentage of the monetary recovery obtained on behalf of the class, and class treatment can turn a $30 case into a $3 million case. But what about class actions that do not involve monetary relief at all? Some civil rights plaintiffs seek to stop a violation, rather than to obtain compensation for past harm, and therefore choose to pursue only an injunction or declaratory …

Class Actions, Indivisibility, And Rule 23(B)(2), Maureen Carroll

Articles

The federal class-action rule contains a provision, Rule 23(b)(2), that authorizes class-wide injunctive or declaratory relief for class-wide wrongs. The procedural needs of civil rights litigation motivated the adoption of the provision in 1966, and in the intervening years, it has played an important role in managing efforts to bring about systemic change. At the same time, courts have sometimes struggled to articulate what plaintiffs must show in order to invoke Rule 23(b)(2). A few years ago, the Supreme Court weighed in, stating that the key to this type of class action is the “indivisible” nature of the remedy the …

Ascertainability: Prose, Policy, And Process, Rhonda Wasserman

Articles

One of the most hotly contested issues in class action practice today is ascertainability – when and how the identities of individual class members must be ascertained. The courts of appeals are split on the issue, with courts in different circuits imposing dramatically different burdens on putative class representatives. Courts adopting a strict approach require the class representative to prove that there is an administratively feasible means of determining whether class members are part of the class. This burden may be insurmountable in consumer class actions because people tend not to save receipts for purchases of low-cost consumer goods, like …

The Impact Of Wal-Mart V. Dukes On Employment Discrimination Class Actions Five Years Out: A Forecast That Suggests More Of A Wave Than A Tsunami, Suzette M. Malveaux

Publications

No abstract provided.

A Diamond In The Rough: Trans-Substantivity Of The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure And Its Detrimental Impact On Civil Rights, Suzette Malveaux

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Power And Promise Of Procedure: Examining The Class Action Landscape After Wal-Mart V. Dukes, Suzette M. Malveaux

Publications

No abstract provided.

Plausibility Pleading And Employment Discrimination, Suzette M. Malveaux

Publications

No abstract provided.

Sequencing The Issues For Judicial Decisionmaking: Limitations From Jurisdictional Primacy And Intrasuit Preclusion, Kevin M. Clermont

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article treats the order of decision on multiple issues in a single case. That order can be very important, with a lot at stake for the court, society, and parties. Generally speaking, although the parties can control which issues they put before a judge, the judge gets to choose the decisional sequence in light of those various interests.

The law sees fit to put few limits on the judge's power to sequence. The few limits are, in fact, quite narrow in application, and even narrower if properly understood. The Steel Co.-Ruhrgas rule generally requires a federal court to decide …

How Goliath Won: The Future Implications Of Dukes V. Wal-Mart, Suzette M. Malveaux

Publications

No abstract provided.

Multinational Class Actions Under Federal Securities Law: Managing Jurisdictional Conflict, Hannah Buxbaum

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article examines a form of securities class action that is growing increasingly popular in U.S. courts: the foreign cubed action, brought against a foreign issuer on behalf of a class that includes foreign investors who purchased securities on a foreign exchange. These cases are becoming an important part of the regulatory landscape (as evidenced by recent high-profile lawsuits involving issuers such as Vivendi, Bayer and Royal Ahold), and they create the potential for particularly severe conflict with other countries on the question of how best to regulate global economic activity. Yet they point out quite clearly that the traditional …