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Full-Text Articles in Law
Optimal Class Size, Opt-Out Rights, And "Indivisible" Remedies, Jay Tidmarsh, David Betson
Optimal Class Size, Opt-Out Rights, And "Indivisible" Remedies, Jay Tidmarsh, David Betson
Jay Tidmarsh
Prepared for a Symposium on the ALI’s Aggregate Litigation Project, this paper examines the ALI’s proposal to permit opt-out rights when remedies and “divisible,” but not to permit them when remedies are “indivisible.” Starting from the ground up, the paper employs economic analysis to determine what the optimal size of a class action should be. We demonstrate that, in some circumstances, the optimal size of a class is a class composed of all victims, while in other cases, the optimal size is smaller. We further argue that courts should consider optimal class size in determining whether to certify a class, …
Cy Pres And The Optimal Class Action, Jay Tidmarsh
Cy Pres And The Optimal Class Action, Jay Tidmarsh
Jay Tidmarsh
Prepared for a symposium on class actions, this Article examines the problem of cy pres relief in class actions through the lens of optimal claim structure and class membership. It finds that the present cy pres doctrine does little to advance the creation of optimal class actions, and that it may do some harm to achieving that goal. The Article then proposes an alternative “nudge” to induce putative class counsel to structure class actions in an optimal way: setting attorneys’ fees so that counsel is compensated through a combination of an hourly market rate and a percentage of the net …
Medical Paternalism And The Rule Of Law: A Reply To Dr. Relman, Charles Baron
Medical Paternalism And The Rule Of Law: A Reply To Dr. Relman, Charles Baron
Charles H. Baron
In this Article, Professor Baron challenges the position taken recently by Dr. Arnold Relman in this journal that the 1977 Saikewicz decision of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts was incorrect in calling for routine judicial resolution of decisions whether to provide life-prolonging treatment to terminally ill incompetent patients. First, Professor Baron argues that Dr. Relman's position that doctors should make such decisions is based upon an outmoded, paternalistic view of the doctor-patient relationship. Second, he points out the importance of guaranteeing to such decisions the special qualities of process which characterize decision making by courts and which are not …
Bad Briefs, Bad Law, Bad Markets: Documenting The Poor Quality Of Plaintiffs’ Briefs, Its Impact On The Law, And The Market Failure It Reflects, Scott A. Moss
Scott A Moss
For a major field, employment discrimination suffers surprisingly low-quality plaintiff’s lawyering. This Article details a study of several hundred summary judgment briefs, finding as follows: (1) the vast majority of plaintiffs’ briefs omit available caselaw rebutting key defense arguments, many falling far below basic professional standards with incoherent writing or no meaningful research; (2) low-quality briefs lose at over double the rate of good briefs; and (3) bad briefs skew caselaw evolution, because even controlling for won/loss rate, bad plaintiffs’ briefs far more often yield decisions crediting debatable defenses. These findings are puzzling; in a major legal service market, how …
The Relational Contingency Of Rights, Alex Stein, Gideon Parchomovsky
The Relational Contingency Of Rights, Alex Stein, Gideon Parchomovsky
Alex Stein
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 …
Legitimacy, Accountability, And Partnership: A Model For Advocacy On Third World Environmental Issues, David A. Wirth
Legitimacy, Accountability, And Partnership: A Model For Advocacy On Third World Environmental Issues, David A. Wirth
David A. Wirth
To date, there has been little effort to define the characteristics of responsible environmental reform efforts by private citizens and organizations in the United States on foreign environmental problems, such as the quality of foreign aid. Moreover, there have been virtually no attempts to identify a principled role for American lawyers in Third World environmental issues. This Essay will respond to these lacunae by articulating a new approach to advocacy based on a partnership model. In Part I, this Essay identifies the need for American public interest advocates to establish partnerships with directly affected groups on Third World environmental issues. …
Invisible Ink In The Eighth Arrondissement, Karl T. Muth
Invisible Ink In The Eighth Arrondissement, Karl T. Muth
Karl T Muth
IMPORTANT: This document may prompt you for a username and password. If this occurs, please simply click "cancel" and the document will load. Thank you. This Article deals with the history of the secret contract that governs the distribution of economic rents enjoyed by Formula One. It further explores the environment in which this secret contract evolved and briefly discusses applications for secret contracts in other scenarios and industries.
Much Ado About Pluralities: Pride And Precedent Amidst The Cacophy Of Concurrences, And Re-Percolation After Rapanos, Donald J. Kochan, Melissa M. Berry, Matthew J. Parlow
Much Ado About Pluralities: Pride And Precedent Amidst The Cacophy Of Concurrences, And Re-Percolation After Rapanos, Donald J. Kochan, Melissa M. Berry, Matthew J. Parlow
Donald J. Kochan
Conflicts created by concurrences and pluralities in court decisions create confusion in law and lower court interpretation. Rule of law values require that individuals be able to identify controlling legal principles. That task is complicated when pluralities and concurrences contribute to the vagueness or uncertainty that leaves us wondering what the controlling rule is or attempting to predict what it will evolve to become. The rule of law is at least handicapped when continuity or confidence or confusion infuse our understanding of the applicable rules. This Article uses the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Rapanos v. United States to …