Law Commons^™

Attorneys’ Fees And Expenses In Class Action Settlements: 1993-2008, Theodore Eisenberg, Geoffrey P. Miller

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

We report on a comprehensive data base of eighteen years of published opinions (1993-2008, inclusive) on settlements in class action and shareholder derivative cases in both state and federal courts. An earlier study, covering1993-2002 , revealed a remarkable relationship between attorneys’ fees and the size of class recovery: regardless of the methodology for calculating fees ostensibly employed by the courts, the overwhelmingly important determinant of the fee was simply the size of the recovery obtained by the class. The present study, which nearly doubles the number of cases in the data base, powerfully confirms that relationship. Fees display the same …

Litigation Realities Redux, Kevin M. Clermont

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Both summarizing recent empirical work and presenting new observations on each of the six phases of a civil lawsuit (forum, pretrial, settlement, trial, judgment, and appeal), the author stresses the needs for and benefits from understanding and using empirical methods in the study of the adjudicatory system's operation.

What Is The Settlement Rate And Why Should We Care?, Theodore Eisenberg, Charlotte Lanvers

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

After establishing the importance of knowledge of settlement rates, this article first shows that different research questions can yield different settlement rates. Using data gathered from about 3,300 federal cases in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (EDPA) and the Northern District of Georgia (NDGA), differing measures of settlement emerge depending on whether one is interested in (1) settlement as a proxy for plaintiffs’ litigation success, or (2) settlement as a measure of litigated disputes resolved without final adjudication. Using settlement as a proxy for plaintiff success, we estimate the aggregate settlement rate across case categories in the two districts to …

Federal Criminal Appeals: A Brief Empirical Perspective, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Although few dispute the appellate process's centrality to justice systems, especially in the criminal context, debates over rationales supporting the appellate process's vaunted status in adjudication systems persist. Clearly, it is difficult to overestimate error correction as a justification for an appellate system. Of course, other rationales, such as a desire for lawmaking and legitimacy, also support the inclusion of a mechanism for appellate review in an adjudication system.

Though comparative latecomers, appellate courts are now ubiquitous in the American legal landscape—appellate review exists in state and federal systems for criminal convictions. Despite general agreement and widespread understanding that access …

Employment Discrimination Plaintiffs In Federal Court: From Bad To Worse?, Kevin M. Clermont, Stewart J. Schwab

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article utilizes the Administrative Office's data to convey the realities of federal employment discrimination litigation. Litigants in these "jobs" cases appeal more often than other litigants, with the defendants doing far better on those appeals than the plaintiffs. These troublesome facts help explain why today fewer plaintiffs are undertaking the frustrating route into federal district court, where plaintiffs must pursue their claims relatively often all the way through trial and where at both pretrial and trial these plaintiffs lose unusually often.

Cooperative Federalism Post-Schaffer: The Burden Of Proof And Preemption In Special Education, Lara Gelbwasser Freed

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Courting Trouble: Litigation, High-Stakes Testing, And Education Policy, Michael R. Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

High-stakes testing policies did not emerge in an education policy vacuum. Part I of this Article includes a brief description of the major high-stakes tests and their policy rationales. Part II surveys recent litigation challenging one distinct genre of high-stakes testing-high school exit exams. Two cases illustrate courts' current posture toward legal challenges of exit exams. Part III reviews evidence of courts' increased sensitivity to the policy consequences attributable to court decisions that interfere with the implementation of exit exams. Part IV concludes and notes the important normative questions raised by judges' concerns with policy consequences flowing from their decisions.