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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Litigating Epa Rules: A Fifty-Year Retrospective Of Environmental Rulemaking In The Courts, Cary Coglianese, Daniel E. Walters
Litigating Epa Rules: A Fifty-Year Retrospective Of Environmental Rulemaking In The Courts, Cary Coglianese, Daniel E. Walters
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Over the last fifty years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has found itself repeatedly defending its regulations before federal judges. The agency’s engagement with the federal judiciary has resulted in prominent Supreme Court decisions, such as Chevron v. NRDC and Massachusetts v. EPA, which have left a lasting imprint on federal administrative law. Such prominent litigation has also fostered, for many observers, a longstanding impression of an agency besieged by litigation. In particular, many lawyers and scholars have long believed that unhappy businesses or environmental groups challenge nearly every EPA rule in court. Although some empirical studies have …
Class Actions, Statutes Of Limitations And Repose, And Federal Common Law, Stephen B. Burbank, Tobias Barrington Wolff
Class Actions, Statutes Of Limitations And Repose, And Federal Common Law, Stephen B. Burbank, Tobias Barrington Wolff
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After more than three decades during which it gave the issue scant attention, the Supreme Court has again made the American Pipe doctrine an active part of its docket. American Pipe addresses the tolling of statutes of limitations in federal class action litigation. When plaintiffs file a putative class action in federal court and class certification is denied, absent members of the putative class may wish to pursue their claims in some kind of further proceeding. If the statute of limitations would otherwise have expired while the class certification issue was being resolved, these claimants may need the benefit of …
The Federal Rules Of Inmate Appeals, Catherine T. Struve
The Federal Rules Of Inmate Appeals, Catherine T. Struve
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The Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure turn fifty in 2018. During the Rules’ half-century of existence, the number of federal appeals by self-represented, incarcerated litigants has grown dramatically. This article surveys ways in which the procedure for inmate appeals has evolved over the past 50 years, and examines the challenges of designing procedures with confined litigants in mind. In the initial decades under the Appellate Rules, the most visible developments concerning the procedure for inmate appeals arose from the interplay between court decisions and the federal rulemaking process. But, as court dockets swelled, the circuits also developed local case management …
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
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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 …
The Law And Economics Of Proportionality In Discovery, Jonah B. Gelbach, Bruce H. Kobayashi
The Law And Economics Of Proportionality In Discovery, Jonah B. Gelbach, Bruce H. Kobayashi
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This paper analyzes the proportionality standard in discovery. Many believe the Advisory Committee's renewed emphasis on this standard has the potential to infuse litigation practice with considerably more attention to questions related to the costs and benefits of discovery. We discuss the history and rationale of proportionality's inclusion in Rule 26, adopting an analytical framework that focuses on how costs and benefits can diverge in litigation generally, and discovery in particular. Finally, we use this framework to understand the mechanics and challenges involved in deploying the six factors included in the proportionality standard. Throughout, we emphasize that the proportionality standard …
The Subterranean Counterrevolution: The Supreme Court, The Media, And Litigation Retrenchment, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang
The Subterranean Counterrevolution: The Supreme Court, The Media, And Litigation Retrenchment, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang
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This article is part of a larger project to study the counterrevolution against private enforcement of federal law from an institutional perspective. In a series of articles emerging from the project, we show 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 private enforcement. An institutional perspective helps to explain the outcome we document: the long-term erosion of the infrastructure of private enforcement as a result of …
Spelling Out Spokeo, Craig Konnoth, Seth F. Kreimer
Spelling Out Spokeo, Craig Konnoth, Seth F. Kreimer
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For almost five decades, the injury-in-fact requirement has been a mainstay of Article III standing doctrine. Critics have attacked the requirement as incoherent and unduly malleable. But the Supreme Court has continued to announce “injury in fact” as the bedrock of justiciability. In Spokeo v. Robins, the Supreme Court confronted a high profile and recurrent conflict regarding the standing of plaintiffs claiming statutory damages. It clarified some matters, but remanded the case for final resolution. This Essay derives from the cryptic language of Spokeo a six stage process (complete with flowchart) that represents the Court’s current equilibrium. We put …
Medicare Secondary Payer And Settlement Delay, Eric Helland, Jonathan Klick
Medicare Secondary Payer And Settlement Delay, Eric Helland, Jonathan Klick
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The Medicare Secondary Payer Act of 1980 and its subsequent amendments require that insurers and self-insured companies report settlements, awards, and judgments that involve a Medicare beneficiary to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The parties then may be required to compensate CMS for its conditional payments. In a simple settlement model, this makes settlement less likely. Also, the reporting delays and uncertainty regarding the size of these conditional payments are likely to further frustrate the settlement process. We provide results, using data from a large insurer, showing that, on average, implementation of the MSP reporting amendments led to …
Can We Learn Anything About Pleading Changes From Existing Data?, Jonah B. Gelbach
Can We Learn Anything About Pleading Changes From Existing Data?, Jonah B. Gelbach
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In light of the gateway role that the pleading standard can play in our civil litigation system, measuring the empirical effects of pleading policy changes embodied in the Supreme Court's controversial Twombly and Iqbal cases is important. In my earlier paper, Locking the Doors to Discovery, I argued that in doing so, special care is required in formulating the object of empirical study. Taking party behavior seriously, as Locking the Doors does, leads to empirical results suggesting that Twombly and Iqbal have had substantial effects among cases that face Rule 12(b)(6) motions post-Iqbal. This paper responds to …
Introduction To The Workplace Constitution From The New Deal To The New Right, Sophia Z. Lee
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 …
Rethinking Summary Judgment Empirics: The Life Of The Parties, Jonah B. Gelbach
Rethinking Summary Judgment Empirics: The Life Of The Parties, Jonah B. Gelbach
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No abstract provided.
Sue On Pay: Say On Pay’S Impact On Directors’ Fiduciary Duties, Lisa Fairfax
Sue On Pay: Say On Pay’S Impact On Directors’ Fiduciary Duties, Lisa Fairfax
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This Article advances a normative case for using say on pay litigation to enhance the state courts’ role in policing directors’ compensation decisions. Outrage over what many perceive to be excessive executive compensation has escalated dramatically in recent years. In 2010, such outrage prompted Congress to mandate say on pay—a nonbinding shareholder vote on executive compensation. In the wake of say on pay votes, some shareholders have brought suit against directors alleging that a negative vote indicates a breach of directors’ fiduciary duties. To date, the vast majority of courts have rejected these suits. This Article insists that such rejection …
The Relational Contingency Of Rights, Gideon Parchomovsky, Alex Stein
The Relational Contingency Of Rights, Gideon Parchomovsky, Alex Stein
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In this Article, we demonstrate, contrary to conventional wisdom, that all rights are relationally contingent. Our main thesis is that rights afford their holders meaningful protection only against challengers who face higher litigation costs than the rightholder. Contrariwise, challengers who can litigate more cheaply than a rightholder can force the rightholder to forfeit the right and thereby render the right ineffective. Consequently, in the real world, rights avail only against certain challengers but not others. This result is robust and pervasive. Furthermore, it obtains irrespectively of how rights and other legal entitlements are defined by the legislator or construed by …
Locking The Doors To Discovery? Assessing The Effects Of Twombly And Iqbal On Access To Discovery, Jonah B. Gelbach
Locking The Doors To Discovery? Assessing The Effects Of Twombly And Iqbal On Access To Discovery, Jonah B. Gelbach
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Many observers believe the Supreme Court’s Twombly and Iqbal opinions have curtailed access to civil justice. But previous empirical studies looking only at Rule 12(b)(6) grant rates have failed to capture the full effect of these cases because they have not accounted for party selection—changes in party behavior that can be expected following changes in pleading standards. In this Note, I show how party selection can be expected to undermine the empirical usefulness of simple grant-rate comparisons. I then use a conceptual model of party behavior that allows me to derive an adjusted measure of Twombly/Iqbal’s impact and show …
A Tea Party At The Hague?, Stephen B. Burbank
A Tea Party At The Hague?, Stephen B. Burbank
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In this article, I consider the prospects for and impediments to judicial cooperation with the United States. I do so by describing a personal journey that began more than twenty years ago when I first taught and wrote about international civil litigation. An important part of my journey has involved studying the role that the United States has played, and can usefully play, in fostering judicial cooperation, including through judgment recognition and enforcement. The journey continues but, today, finds me a weary traveler, more worried than ever about the politics and practice of international procedural lawmaking in the United States. …
Vultures Or Vanguards?: The Role Of Litigation In Sovereign Debt Restructuring, Jill E. Fisch, Caroline M. Gentile
Vultures Or Vanguards?: The Role Of Litigation In Sovereign Debt Restructuring, Jill E. Fisch, Caroline M. Gentile
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The market for sovereign debt differs from the market for corporate debt in several important ways including the risk of opportunistic default by sovereign debtors, the importance of political pressures, and the presence of international development organizations. Moreover, countries are subject to neither liquidation nor standardized processes of debt reorganization. Instead, negotiations between a sovereign debtor and its creditors lead to a voluntary restructuring of the sovereign's debt. One of the greatest difficulties in restructuring claims against sovereign debtors is balancing the interests of the majority of the creditors with those of minority creditors. Holdout creditors serve as a check …
“Black People’S Money”: The Impact Of Law, Economics, And Culture In The Context Of Race On Damage Recoveries, Regina Austin
“Black People’S Money”: The Impact Of Law, Economics, And Culture In The Context Of Race On Damage Recoveries, Regina Austin
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“’Black People’s Money’: The Impact of Law, Economics, and Culture in the Context of Race on Damage Recoveries” is one of a series of articles by the author dealing with black economic marginalization; prior work considered such topics as shopping and selling as forms of deviance, street vending, restraints on leisure, and the importance of informality in loan transactions. This article deals with the linkage between the social significance of black people’s money and its material value. It analyzes the construction of “black money,” its association with cash, and the taboos and cultural practices that assure that black money will …
The Roles Of Litigation, Stephen B. Burbank
The Roles Of Litigation, Stephen B. Burbank
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No abstract provided.
Human Rights, Civil Wrongs And Foreign Relations: A "Sinical" Look At The Use Of U.S. Litigation To Address Human Rights Abuses Abroad, Jacques Delisle
Human Rights, Civil Wrongs And Foreign Relations: A "Sinical" Look At The Use Of U.S. Litigation To Address Human Rights Abuses Abroad, Jacques Delisle
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No abstract provided.
Lawyers On The Auction Block: Evaluation And Selection Of Class Counsel By Auction, Jill E. Fisch
Lawyers On The Auction Block: Evaluation And Selection Of Class Counsel By Auction, Jill E. Fisch
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The lead counsel auction has attracted increasing attention. Auction advocates argue that auctions introduce competitive market forces that improve the selection and compensation of class counsel. The benefits of the auction, the;' claim, include lower legal fees and better representation. Careful scrutiny reveals that auction advocates have overlooked substantial methodological problems with the design and implementation of the lead counsel auction. Even if these problems were overcome, the auction procedure is flawed: Auctions are poor tools for selecting firms based on multiple criteria, compromise the judicial role, and are unlikely to produce reasonable fee awards. Although the existing record is …
Aggregation, Auctions, And Other Developments In The Selection Of Lead Counsel Under The Pslra, Jill E. Fisch
Aggregation, Auctions, And Other Developments In The Selection Of Lead Counsel Under The Pslra, Jill E. Fisch
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No abstract provided.
Taking Action Against Auctions: The Third Circuit Task Force Report, Jill E. Fisch
Taking Action Against Auctions: The Third Circuit Task Force Report, Jill E. Fisch
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No abstract provided.
Teaching Corporate Governance Through Shareholder Litigation, Jill E. Fisch
Teaching Corporate Governance Through Shareholder Litigation, Jill E. Fisch
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No abstract provided.
Incentives To Settle Under Joint And Several Liability: An Empirical Analysis Of Superfund Litigation, Howard F. Chang, Hilary Sigman
Incentives To Settle Under Joint And Several Liability: An Empirical Analysis Of Superfund Litigation, Howard F. Chang, Hilary Sigman
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Congress may soon restrict joint and several liability for cleanup of contaminated sites under Superfund. We explore whether this change would discourage settlements and is therefore likely to increase the program 's already high litigation costs per site. Recent theoretical research by Kornhauser and Revesz finds that joint and several liability may either encourage or discourage settlement, depending on the correlation of outcomes at trial across defendants. We extend their two-defendant model to a richer framework with N defendants. This extension allows us to test the theoretical model empirically using data on Superfund litigation. We find that joint and several …
The Scope Of Private Securities Litigation: In Search Of Liability Standards For Secondary Defendants, Jill E. Fisch
The Scope Of Private Securities Litigation: In Search Of Liability Standards For Secondary Defendants, Jill E. Fisch
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Recent federal court decisions have struggled to apply the Supreme Court's decision in Central Bank v. First Interstate to determine when outside professionals should be held liable as primary violators under section IO(b) of the Securities Exchange Act. In keeping with the Court's current interpretive methodology, Central Bank and its progeny employ a textualist approach. In this Article, Professor Fisch argues that literal textualism is an inappropriate approach for interpreting the federal securities laws generally and misguided in light of legislative developments post-dating the Central Bank decision. Instead, Professor Fisch advocates an approach that weighs Congress 's recent endorsement of …
Class Action Reform, Qui Tam, And The Role Of The Plaintiff, Jill E. Fisch
Class Action Reform, Qui Tam, And The Role Of The Plaintiff, Jill E. Fisch
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No abstract provided.
Class Action Reform: Lessons From Securities Litigation, Jill E. Fisch
Class Action Reform: Lessons From Securities Litigation, Jill E. Fisch
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No abstract provided.
An Analysis Of Fee Shifting Based On The Margin Of Victory: On Frivolous Suints, Meritorious Suits, And The Role Of Rule 11, Howard F. Chang, Lucian A. Bebchuk
An Analysis Of Fee Shifting Based On The Margin Of Victory: On Frivolous Suints, Meritorious Suits, And The Role Of Rule 11, Howard F. Chang, Lucian A. Bebchuk
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When plaintiffs cannot predict the outcome of litigation with certainty, neither the American rule (each litigant bears its own litigation expenses) nor the British rule (the losing litigant pays the attorneys' fees of the winning litigant) would induce optimal decisions to bring suit. Plaintiffs may bring frivolous suits when litigation costs are small relative to the amount at stake; plaintiffs may not bring meritorious suits when litigation costs are large relative to this amount. More general fee-shifting rules are based not only on the identity of the winning party but also on how strong the court perceives the case to …
Constructing The Insurance Relationship: Sales Stories, Claims Stories, And Insurance Contract Damages, Tom Baker
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No abstract provided.
Captive Courts: The Destruction Of Judicial Decisions By Agreement Of The Parties, Jill E. Fisch
Captive Courts: The Destruction Of Judicial Decisions By Agreement Of The Parties, Jill E. Fisch
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No abstract provided.