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Full-Text Articles in Legal History

What History Can Tell Us About The Future Of Insurance And Litigation After Covid-19, Kenneth S. Abraham, Tom Baker Apr 2022

What History Can Tell Us About The Future Of Insurance And Litigation After Covid-19, Kenneth S. Abraham, Tom Baker

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This Article, written for the annual Clifford Symposium on Tort Law and Social Policy, chronicles a series of developments in American history that profoundly influenced the course of insurance and insurance law, in order to predict the post-COVID-19 future of these fields. In each instance, there was a direct and decided cause-and-effect relationship between these developments and subsequent change in the world of insurance and insurance law. As important as the influence of COVID-19 is at present and probably will be in the future, in our view the COVID-19 pandemic will not be as significant an influence on insurance and …


A Formulaic Recitation Will Not Do: Why The Federal Rules Demand More Detail In Criminal Pleading, Charles Eric Hintz Jan 2021

A Formulaic Recitation Will Not Do: Why The Federal Rules Demand More Detail In Criminal Pleading, Charles Eric Hintz

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When a plaintiff files a civil lawsuit in federal court, her complaint must satisfy certain minimum standards. Specifically, under the prevailing understanding of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a), a complaint must plead sufficient factual matter to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face, rather than mere conclusory statements. Given the significantly higher stakes involved in criminal cases, one might think that an even more robust requirement would exist in that context. But in fact a weaker pleading standard reigns. Under the governing interpretation of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 7(c), indictments that simply parrot the …


A Babe In The Woods: An Essay On Kirby Lumber And The Evolution Of Corporate Law, Lawrence Hamermesh Dec 2020

A Babe In The Woods: An Essay On Kirby Lumber And The Evolution Of Corporate Law, Lawrence Hamermesh

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This essay examines the development of corporate law during the time span of the author's career, focusing on the interrelated subjects of valuation, corporate purpose, and shareholder litigation.


The Rule Of Reason, Herbert J. Hovenkamp Jan 2018

The Rule Of Reason, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

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Antitrust’s rule of reason was born out of a thirty-year (1897-1927) division among Supreme Court Justices about the proper way to assess multi-firm restraints on competition. By the late 1920s the basic contours of the rule for restraints among competitors was roughly established. Antitrust policy toward vertical restraints remained much more unstable, however, largely because their effects were so poorly understood.

This article provides a litigation field guide for antitrust claims under the rule of reason – or more precisely, for situations when application of the rule of reason is likely. At the time pleadings are drafted and even up …


Class Actions And The Counterrevolution Against Federal Litigation, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang Jan 2017

Class Actions And The Counterrevolution Against Federal Litigation, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

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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 …


Choice Of Law And Jurisdictional Policy In The Federal Courts, Tobias Barrington Wolff Jan 2017

Choice Of Law And Jurisdictional Policy In The Federal Courts, Tobias Barrington Wolff

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For seventy-five years, Klaxon v. Stentor Electric Manufacturing has provided a one-line answer to choice-of-law questions in federal diversity cases: Erie requires the federal court to employ the same law that a court of the state would select. The simplicity of the proposition likely accounts for the unqualified breadth with which federal courts now apply it. Choice of law doctrine is difficult, consensus in hard cases is elusive, and the anxiety that Erie produces over the demands of federalism tends to stifle any reexamination of core assumptions. The attraction of a simple answer is obvious. But Klaxon cannot bear the …


Procedure And Pragmatism, Stephen B. Burbank Jan 2016

Procedure And Pragmatism, Stephen B. Burbank

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In this essay, prepared as part of a festschrift for the Italian scholar, Michele Taruffo, I portray him as a pragmatic realist of the sort described by Richard Posner in his book, Reflections on Judging. Viewing him as such, I salute Taruffo for challenging the established order in domestic and comparative law thinking about civil law systems, the role of lawyers, courts and precedent in those systems, and also for casting the light of the comparative enterprise on common law systems, particularly that in the United States. Speaking as one iconoclast of another, however, I also raise questions about Taruffo’s …


Scott V. Harris And The Future Of Summary Judgment, Tobias Barrington Wolff Jul 2015

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. …


Introduction To The Workplace Constitution From The New Deal To The New Right, Sophia Z. Lee Jan 2014

Introduction To The Workplace Constitution From The New Deal To The New Right, Sophia Z. Lee

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Today, most American workers do not have constitutional rights on the job. As The Workplace Constitution shows, this outcome was far from inevitable. Instead, American workers have a long history of fighting for such rights. Beginning in the 1930s, civil rights advocates sought constitutional protections against racial discrimination by employers and unions. At the same time, a conservative right-to-work movement argued that the Constitution protected workers from having to join or support unions. Those two movements, with their shared aim of extending constitutional protections to American workers, were a potentially powerful combination. But they sought to use those protections to …


Discretion In Class Certification, Tobias Barrington Wolff Jan 2014

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 …


Masthead, Editors Jan 2011

Masthead, Editors

University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law and Social Change

No abstract provided.


Greater And Lesser Powers Of Tort Reform: The Primary Jurisdiction Doctrine And State-Law Claims Concerning Fda-Approved Products, Catherine T. Struve Jan 2008

Greater And Lesser Powers Of Tort Reform: The Primary Jurisdiction Doctrine And State-Law Claims Concerning Fda-Approved Products, Catherine T. Struve

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Ip And Antitrust Policy: A Brief Historical Overview, Herbert J. Hovenkamp Dec 2005

Ip And Antitrust Policy: A Brief Historical Overview, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

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The history of IP/antitrust litigation is filled with exaggerated notions of the power conferred by IP rights and imagined threats to competition. The result is that antitrust litigation involving IP practices has seen problems where none existed. To be sure, finding the right balance between maintaining competition and creating incentives to innovate is no easy task. However, the judge in an IP/antitrust case almost never needs to do the balancing, most of which is done in the language of the IP provisions. The role of antitrust tribunals is the much more limited one of ensuring that any alleged threat to …


Preclusion In Class Action Litigation, Tobias Barrington Wolff Jan 2005

Preclusion In Class Action Litigation, Tobias Barrington Wolff

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"Despite the intense focus that courts and commentators have trained upon class litigation for the last twenty-five years, a central feature of the class-action lawsuit has received no sustained attention: the preclusive effect that a judgment in a class action should have upon the other, non-class claims of absentees. The omission is a serious one. If claim and issue preclusion were to operate in their normal mode when a claim is certified for class treatment, absentees would sometimes face a serious threat of having their high-value individual claims compromised. Such a threat, in turn, can create ex ante conflicts of …


Running In Place: The Paradox Of Expanding Rights And Restricted Remedies, David Rudovsky Jan 2005

Running In Place: The Paradox Of Expanding Rights And Restricted Remedies, David Rudovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Doctors, The Adversary System, And Proceudral Reform In Medical Liability Litigation, Catherine T. Struve Jan 2004

Doctors, The Adversary System, And Proceudral Reform In Medical Liability Litigation, Catherine T. Struve

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Tribal Immunity And Tribal Courts, Catherine T. Struve Jan 2004

Tribal Immunity And Tribal Courts, Catherine T. Struve

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Defeating Class Certification In Securities Fraud Actions, Kermit Roosevelt Iii Jan 2003

Defeating Class Certification In Securities Fraud Actions, Kermit Roosevelt Iii

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Exhaustion Under The Prison Litigation Reform Act: The Consequence Of Procedural Error, Kermit Roosevelt Iii Jan 2003

Exhaustion Under The Prison Litigation Reform Act: The Consequence Of Procedural Error, Kermit Roosevelt Iii

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Civil Rights Litigation: The Current Paradox, David Rudovsky Jan 2003

Civil Rights Litigation: The Current Paradox, David Rudovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Foreword: Causes And Limits Of Pessimism, Stephen B. Burbank Jan 2000

Foreword: Causes And Limits Of Pessimism, Stephen B. Burbank

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


An Historical Analysis Of The Binding Nature Of Class Suits, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr., John L. Gedid, Stephen Sowie Jan 1998

An Historical Analysis Of The Binding Nature Of Class Suits, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr., John L. Gedid, Stephen Sowie

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Class Action Reform: Lessons From Securities Litigation, Jill E. Fisch Jan 1997

Class Action Reform: Lessons From Securities Litigation, Jill E. Fisch

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Attorney-Client And Work Product Protection In A Utilitarian World: An Argument For Recomparison, Catherine T. Struve Jan 1995

Attorney-Client And Work Product Protection In A Utilitarian World: An Argument For Recomparison, Catherine T. Struve

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Discovery Vices And Trans-Substantive Virtues In The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr. Jan 1989

Discovery Vices And Trans-Substantive Virtues In The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.