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Res Judicata As Requisite For Justice, Kevin M. Clermont
Res Judicata As Requisite For Justice, Kevin M. Clermont
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
From historical, jurisprudential, and comparative perspectives, this Article tries to synthesize res judicata while integrating it with the rest of law. From near their beginnings, all systems of justice have delivered a core of res judicata comprising the substance of bar and defense preclusion. This core is universal not because it represents a universal value, but rather because it responds to a universal institutional need. Any justice system must have adjudicators; to be effective, their judgments must mean something with bindingness; and the minimal bindingness is that, except in specified circumstances, the disgruntled cannot undo a judgment in an effort …
Common-Law Compulsory Counterclaim Rule: Creating Effective And Elegant Res Judicata Doctrine, Kevin M. Clermont
Common-Law Compulsory Counterclaim Rule: Creating Effective And Elegant Res Judicata Doctrine, Kevin M. Clermont
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Even in the absence of an applicable statute or court rule, failure to assert an available counterclaim precludes bringing a subsequent action thereon if granting relief would nullify the judgment in the initial action. This so-called common-law compulsory counterclaim rule emerges from the intuitive principle of claim preclusion that a valid and final judgment generally precludes the defendant from later asserting mere defenses to the claim. The implicit extension of this idea is that once a plaintiff obtains a judgment, the defendant generally cannot bring a new action to undo the judgment by reopening the plaintiff’s claim and pushing those …