Law Commons^™

On Regulatory Discord And Procedure, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

Scholarly Works

Businesses are increasingly global. But domestic courts’ jurisdiction remains largely provincial; both public and private regulators have overlapping, mismatched authority. Regulatory discord is readily apparent in consumer protection cases. When the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act empowered state regulators while simultaneously creating an encompassing federal regulator—the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—it further contributed to overlap between federal agencies, states, and private litigation.

Whether this regulatory magnetism is optimal in terms of fundamental goals like compensation and deterrence is a hotly debated normative and empirical question. Yet, one need not wade too far into the substantive debate to appreciate …

Constructing Issue Classes, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

Scholarly Works

As government budgets shrink each year, enforcement responsibilities in products liability, consumer protection, and employment discrimination fall increasingly to private attorneys. But defendants have successfully layered new objections about noncohesive classes and unascertainable members atop legislative and judicial reforms to cripple plaintiffs’ attorneys’ chief weapon — the class action. The result? Courts deny class certification and defendants escape enforcement by highlighting the differences among those affected by their misconduct. At the other end of the regulatory spectrum lies the opposite problem. Some defendants’ actions are so egregious that hordes of public and private regulators can’t help but get involved — …

Judging Multidistrict Litigation, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

Scholarly Works

High-stakes multidistrict litigations saddle the transferee judges who manage them with an odd juxtaposition of power and impotence. On one hand, judges appoint and compensate lead lawyers (who effectively replace parties’ chosen counsel) and promote settlement with scant appellate scrutiny or legislative oversight. But on the other, without the arsenal class certification once afforded, judges are relatively powerless to police the private settlements they encourage. Of course, this power shortage is of little concern since parties consent to settle.

Or do they? Contrary to conventional wisdom, this Article introduces new empirical data revealing that judges appoint an overwhelming number of …

Discoverymania: Plausibility Pleading As Misprescription, Fabio Arcila Jr.

Scholarly Works

In replacing notice pleading with plausibility pleading, the Supreme Court chose to use a pleading solution to address a perceived discovery problem. This dissonance calls into question both the wisdom and legitimacy of the Court’s choice because plausibility pleading is too blunt an instrument to serve the Court’s goals: it is destabilizing because it ignores the interrelationship between discovery and other Federal Rules of Civil Procedure; it is unfairly overinclusive because it impacts all plaintiffs in all federal cases rather than only those in the minority of cases in which discovery is likely to be problematic; and it is unfairly …

Superstar Judges As Entrepreneurs: The Untold Story Of Fraud-On-The-Market, Margaret V. Sachs

Scholarly Works

This Article unites two disparate subjects of profound interest to legal scholars. One is fraud-on-the-market, reaffirmed late last term in Erica P. John Fund, Inc. v. Halliburton Co. (Halliburton II). Probably the most important claim in the securities litigation universe, fraud-on-the-market is the sine qua non of almost every securities class action that is filed. The other subject consists of the work of Judges Frank Easterbrook and Richard Posner, the “superstars” of the current federal appellate bench.

My purpose is several-fold: first, to show that fraud-on-the-market’s evolution, up through and culminating in Halliburton II, has been driven in significant measure …

Fairly Pricing Guilty Pleas, Anne R. Traum

Scholarly Works

Building on Professor Andrew Taslitz’s work, this article explores how Fair Price Theory can help us analyze the fairness of guilty pleas. In Judging Jena’s D.A., Professor Taslitz used Fair Price Theory to explore how prosecutors could strive to achieve fairness and reduce the perception of racial stigma. He used Fair Price Theory to propose a system of prosecutorial ethics that takes into account racial stigma. This article considers how Fair Price Theory challenges courts to analyze guilty pleas differently, by focusing on price without relying on the agency of prosecutors. Under current doctrine, a court examines whether the …

The Jury's Constitutional Judgment, Nathan Chapman

Scholarly Works

Despite the early American jury’s near-mythical role as a check on overreaching government agents, the contemporary jury’s role in constitutional adjudication remains opaque. Should the jury have the right to nullify criminal statutes on constitutional grounds? Should the jury apply constitutional doctrine in civil rights suits against government officers? Should courts of appeals defer to the jury’s application of constitutional law, or review it de novo?

This Article offers the first holistic analysis of the jury’s role in constitutional adjudication. It argues that the Constitution’s text, history, and structure strongly support the jury’s authority to apply constitutional law to the …