Law Commons^™

Rjr Nabisco And The Runaway Canon, Maggie Gardner

Maggie Gardner

In last Term’s RJR Nabisco, Inc. v. European Community, the Court finished transforming the presumption against extraterritoriality from a tool meant to effectuate congressional intent into a tool for keeping Congress in check. In the hands of the RJR Nabisco majority, the presumption has become less a method for interpreting statutes than a pronouncement on the proper scope of access to U.S. courts, a pronouncement that Congress must labor to displace. Besides the worrisome implications for separation of powers, the majority’s opinion was also disappointing on practical grounds. By applying the presumption too aggressively, the Court missed an opportunity to …

A Sour Battle In Lago Agrio And Beyond: The Metamorphosis Of Transnational Litigation And The Protection Of Collective Rights In Ecuador, Manuel A. Gomez

Manuel A. Gómez

This article intends to explore the interplay between different dispute processing mechanisms and fora in the realm of transnational litigation, through the lens of the Chevron-Ecuador legal saga. My goal is to discuss the transformation of a transnational complex case and the challenges faced by the parties, their procedural strategies, and the perceived advantages of the different mechanisms. In this regard, I will also address the development of mechanisms for the protection of diffuse rights involving the environment; the role of the courts in supervising compliance with judicial remedies, their engagement in activities that go beyond their traditional role as …

When Bad Guys Are Wearing White Hats, Catherine A. Rogers

Catherine Rogers

Allegations of ethical misconduct by lawyers have all but completely overshadowed the substantive claims in the Chevron case. While both sides have been accused of flagrant wrongdoing, the charges against plaintiffs’ counsel appear to have captured more headlines and garnered more attention. The primary reason why the focus seems lopsided is that plaintiffs’ counsel were presumed to be the ones wearing white hats in this epic drama. This essay postulates that this seeming irony is not simply an example of personal ethical lapse, but in part tied to larger reasons why ethical violations are an occupational hazard for plaintiffs’ counsel …

Understanding The Obstacles To The Recognition And Enforcement Of U.S. Judgments Abroad, Samuel P. Baumgartner

Samuel P. Baumgartner

Questions of recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments have entered center stage. Recent empirical work suggests that there has been a marked increase in the frequency with which U.S. courts are asked to recognize and enforce foreign judgments. The U.S. litigation surrounding a multibillion-dollar Ecuadoran judgment against Chevron indicates that the stakes in some of these cases can be high indeed. This rising importance of questions of judgments recognition has not been lost on lawmakers. In November of 2011, the Subcommittee on Courts, Commercial and Administrative Law of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee held hearings on whether to …

Changes In The European Union's Regime Of Recognizing And Enforcing Judgments And Transnational Litigation In The United States, Samuel P. Baumgartner

Samuel P. Baumgartner

The European Commission has proposed to amend (recast) the Brussels I Regulation, which governs jurisdiction to adjudicate, parallel proceedings, and judgments recognition within the European Union. Although much of the Brussels I Regulation is simply the 1968 Brussels Convention cast into European Union legislation, the proposed amendments are part of a deeper set of structural and conceptual changes in the law of transnational litigation within the Union over the past couple of decades. Understanding these changes is essential to understanding what drives the proposed amendments and what is likely to follow.

In this paper – presented at the symposium Our …