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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
Class Actions And The Counterrevolution Against Federal Litigation, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang
Class Actions And The Counterrevolution Against Federal Litigation, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang
All Faculty Scholarship
In this article we situate consideration of class actions in a framework, and fortify it with data, that we have developed as part of a larger project, the goal of which is to assess the counterrevolution against private enforcement of federal law from an institutional perspective. In a series of articles emerging from the project, we have documented how the Executive, Congress and the Supreme Court (wielding both judicial power under Article III of the Constitution and delegated legislative power under the Rules Enabling Act) fared in efforts to reverse or dull the effects of statutory and other incentives for …
Scott V. Harris And The Future Of Summary Judgment, Tobias Barrington Wolff
Scott V. Harris And The Future Of Summary Judgment, Tobias Barrington Wolff
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The Supreme Court’s decision in Scott v. Harris has quickly become a staple in many Civil Procedure courses, and small wonder. The cinematic high-speed car chase complete with dash-cam video and the Court’s controversial treatment of that video evidence seem tailor-made for classroom discussion. As is often true with instant classics, however, splashy first impressions can mask a more complex state of affairs. At the heart of Scott v. Harris lies the potential for a radical doctrinal reformation: a shift in the core summary judgment standard undertaken to justify a massive expansion of interlocutory appellate jurisdiction in qualified immunity cases. …
Discretion In Class Certification, Tobias Barrington Wolff
Discretion In Class Certification, Tobias Barrington Wolff
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A district court has broad discretion in deciding whether a suit may be maintained as a class action. Variations on this phrase populate the class action jurisprudence of the federal courts. The power of the federal courts to exercise discretion when deciding whether to permit a suit to proceed as a class action has long been treated as an elemental component of a representative proceeding. It is therefore cause for surprise that there is no broad consensus regarding the nature and definition of this judicial discretion in the certification process. The federal courts have not coalesced around a clear or …