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Full-Text Articles in Law

Can John Coffee Rescue The Private Attorney General? Lessons From The Credit Card Wars, Myriam E. Gilles Apr 2016

Can John Coffee Rescue The Private Attorney General? Lessons From The Credit Card Wars, Myriam E. Gilles

Articles

Partisans on one side of the class action debates argue that the class device is a critical enforcement tool that increases much-needed access to justice. Combatants on the other side scoff that class actions are tools for shaking down corporations for settlement payments and attorneys’ fees in unmeritorious cases. In his most recent book, Entrepreneurial Litigation: Its Rise, Fall and Future, John C. Coffee puts both sides in their place, providing an account that, he aptly tells us, “has long been missing in the literature, in large part because academics writing in this area either have been so ideologically committed …


Newsroom: Can Court 'Restore Fundamental Liberties'? 03-23-2016, Sheldon Whitehouse, David A. Logan Mar 2016

Newsroom: Can Court 'Restore Fundamental Liberties'? 03-23-2016, Sheldon Whitehouse, David A. Logan

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.


Continuing To Litigate After You Have Won: Courts Defy Article Iii To Avoid Mooting Tcpa Class Actions, Despite Defendants’ Rule 68 Offers Of Complete Relief, Joseph M. Hnylka Jan 2016

Continuing To Litigate After You Have Won: Courts Defy Article Iii To Avoid Mooting Tcpa Class Actions, Despite Defendants’ Rule 68 Offers Of Complete Relief, Joseph M. Hnylka

Faculty Scholarship

Every day, thousands of ordinary Americans receive unwelcome faxes, text messages, and prerecorded telephone calls (frequently referred to as “robocalls”). The proliferation of these unwelcome messages has increased at an astronomical rate. In 2015, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reported that it received approximately 150,000 complaints each month. This dramatic increase occurred despite Congress’s enactment of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) in 1991, which was meant to restrict dramatically such unwelcome calls, texts, and faxes, and to protect the privacy interests of consumers. Because the recovery under the TCPA is limited to $500 per violation, many consumer suits under …


Commonality And The Constitution: Applying Wal-Mart To State Court Cases, Joseph Seiner Jan 2016

Commonality And The Constitution: Applying Wal-Mart To State Court Cases, Joseph Seiner

Faculty Publications

In Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 131 S. Ct. 2541 (2011), the Supreme Court concluded that the allegations of pay discrimination in a case brought by over a million female employees lacked sufficient commonality to warrant class certification under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(a). Though the case was expressly decided under the federal rules, some well-known employer groups have begun to advance the argument that Wal-Mart was decided on constitutional grounds. These advocates maintain that the Supreme Court’s decision creates a commonality standard for all class-action plaintiffs — regardless of whether those litigants bring their claims in federal or …


De Facto Class Actions: Plaintiff-And Defendant-Oriented Injunctions In Voting Rights, Election Law, And Other Constitutional Cases, Michael T. Morley Jan 2016

De Facto Class Actions: Plaintiff-And Defendant-Oriented Injunctions In Voting Rights, Election Law, And Other Constitutional Cases, Michael T. Morley

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Cfpb Anti-Arbitration Proposal: Let’S Just Give Arbitration A Chance, Ramona L. Lampley Jan 2016

The Cfpb Anti-Arbitration Proposal: Let’S Just Give Arbitration A Chance, Ramona L. Lampley

Faculty Articles

In October 2015, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”) announced that it would propose a rule banning class action waivers in arbitration agreements for consumer financial services products. This proclamation came to fruition in May 2016 when the CFPB proposed 12 C.F.R. part 1040 and sought public comment on the proposed rule. The CFPB claims that the class-waiver, often imbedded in consumer arbitration agreements, gives companies a “free pass from being held accountable by their customers[,]” comparing it to the relief a consumer can obtain as being part of a class action. At the same time, the CFPB proposed reporting …


Hurrah For The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Consumer Arbitration As A Poster Child For Regulation, Jean R. Sternlight Jan 2016

Hurrah For The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Consumer Arbitration As A Poster Child For Regulation, Jean R. Sternlight

Scholarly Works

Drawing on economic, psychological and philosophical considerations, this Essay considers whether consumers should be "free" to "agree" to contractually trade their opportunity to litigate in a class action for the opportunity to bring an arbitration claim against a company. The Essay suggests that by looking at the CFPB's regulation through these three lenses, one sees that the regulation is desirable—even a poster child—for the potential value of regulation when market forces are not sufficient to protect individual or public interests.


Diagnosis And Treatment Of The "Superiority Problem", Jay Tidmarsh Jan 2016

Diagnosis And Treatment Of The "Superiority Problem", Jay Tidmarsh

Journal Articles

Christine Bartholomew has provided a brilliant diagnosis of the "superiority problem" in class-action law, although I am not convinced that her plan to treat the will cure the patient. If superiority is to be eliminated, predominance must also be abandoned. Some new formula must replace Rule 23(b)(3) in its entirety. The problem of Rule 23(b)(3) is that the factors (especially superiority) give too much power to courts to get the results they want. Unless the ills that Professor Bartholomew documents are to be repeated in a new form, any replacement for Rule 23(b)(3) must be far more specific and concrete …


Saving The Public Interest Class Action By Unpacking Theory And Doctrinal Functionality, Suzette M. Malveaux Jan 2016

Saving The Public Interest Class Action By Unpacking Theory And Doctrinal Functionality, Suzette M. Malveaux

Publications

No abstract provided.


One Percent Procedure, Brooke D. Coleman Jan 2016

One Percent Procedure, Brooke D. Coleman

Faculty Articles

Political rhetoric about the one percent is pervasive, as those with the greatest concentrated wealth prosper and the remaining population stagnates. Because of their affluence, the one percent exercise disproportionate control over political and economic systems. This Article argues that federal civil procedure is similarly a one percent regime. The creme de la creme of the bench and bar, along with equally exclusive litigants, often engage in high-stakes, complex civil litigation. It is this type of litigation that dominates both the elite experience and the public perception of what civil litigation is. This litigation is not particularly common, however; while …