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Full-Text Articles in Law
Rethinking The Foundational Critiques Of Lawyers In Social Movements, Scott L. Cummings
Rethinking The Foundational Critiques Of Lawyers In Social Movements, Scott L. Cummings
Fordham Law Review
This Article argues that the current moment invites reconsideration of these critiques. The rise of new social movements—from marriage equality to Black Lives Matter to the recent mobilization against President Trump’s immigration order—and the response of a new generation of movement lawyers eager to lend support has refocused attention on the appropriate role that lawyers should play in advancing progressive social change. Rather than fall back on familiar critical themes, the time is ripe for developing a new affirmative vision.
Lawyers' Ethics Beyond The Vanishing Trial: Unrepresented Claimaints, De Facto Aggregations, Arbitration Mandates, And Privatized Processes, Judith Resnik
Fordham Law Review
Trials are a vivid variable in the world of litigation, as reflected in the title of this colloquium, Civil Litigation Ethics at a Time of Vanishing Trials. The conveners have wisely drawn attention to the disjuncture between legal ethics and today’s litigation world. In this Introduction, I argue that the challenges for lawyers loom larger than those reflected in the declining rate of trials. More facets of contemporary dispute resolution need to be engaged when contemplating the topics and roles that legal ethics need to address in the decades to come.
Rethinking The Foundational Critiques Of Lawyers In Social Movements, Scott L. Cummings
Rethinking The Foundational Critiques Of Lawyers In Social Movements, Scott L. Cummings
Fordham Law Review
This Article argues that the current moment invites reconsideration of these critiques. The rise of new social movements—from marriage equality to Black Lives Matter to the recent mobilization against President Trump’s immigration order—and the response of a new generation of movement lawyers eager to lend support has refocused attention on the appropriate role that lawyers should play in advancing progressive social change. Rather than fall back on familiar critical themes, the time is ripe for developing a new affirmative vision.
Settlement In The Absence Of Anticipated Adjudication, Howard M. Erichson
Settlement In The Absence Of Anticipated Adjudication, Howard M. Erichson
Fordham Law Review
This Article begins with an account of the lawyer’s role in settlement in what we might call the traditional litigation scenario—that is, litigation in which settlement negotiations are conducted in the shadow of anticipated adjudication. This Article then considers four scenarios in which the anticipation of adjudication is altered—resource inadequacy, judicial settlement pressure, lengthy calendar, and class actions not certified for litigation—and asks what effect we should expect each scenario to have on the interests of lawyers and clients regarding settlement. The final part asks what light this analysis sheds on the phenomenon of vanishing trials and concludes with a …
Demosprudence On Trial: Ethics For Movement Lawyers, In Ferguson And Beyond, Justin Hansford
Demosprudence On Trial: Ethics For Movement Lawyers, In Ferguson And Beyond, Justin Hansford
Fordham Law Review
This Article suggests that although civil litigation remains a viable tool, the vanishing trial has limited impact on movement lawyers because we can use the law to promote social change outside of the courtroom. The demosprudence framework helps us to understand this process. By applying this framework to the movement lawyering context, movement lawyers can adapt to the void in voice created by the vanishing trial in civil litigation and still help the movement.
Restraining Lawyers: From “Cases” To “Tasks”, Morris A. Ratner
Restraining Lawyers: From “Cases” To “Tasks”, Morris A. Ratner
Fordham Law Review
These regulatory and market mechanisms for restraining lawyers share a common thread but differ in their purposes, efficacy, and fairness. Despite these differences, the growing intensity of their focus, and their possible amplification of each other, suggest the possibility of the emergence of new professional norms that call on litigators to think more deeply and inclusively about value from the perspective of court and client when making litigation choices.
The Public Believes Predispute Binding Arbitration Clauses Are Unjust: Ethical Implications For Dispute-System Design In The Time Of Vanishing Trials, Victor D. Quintanilla, Alexander B. Avtgis
The Public Believes Predispute Binding Arbitration Clauses Are Unjust: Ethical Implications For Dispute-System Design In The Time Of Vanishing Trials, Victor D. Quintanilla, Alexander B. Avtgis
Fordham Law Review
Drawing on these findings, we discuss the pressing need for a wider ethic that applies to transactional attorneys who design binding arbitration clauses within adhesion contracts. We also draw lessons from behavioral legal ethics and social psychology. These lessons reveal that this wider ethic may be endangered by the situational influences that currently operate within law firms (and in-house) due to these two intersecting patterns. We discuss ways of altering the regulatory environment to encourage the wider ethic to flourish.
Due Process Without Judicial Process?: Antiadversarialism In American Legal Culture, Norman W. Spaulding
Due Process Without Judicial Process?: Antiadversarialism In American Legal Culture, Norman W. Spaulding
Fordham Law Review
For decades now, American scholars of procedure and legal ethics have remarked upon the death of the jury trial. If jury trial is not in fact dead as an institution for the resolution of disputes, it is certainly “vanishing.” Even in complex litigation, courts tend to facilitate nonadjudicative resolutions—providing sites for aggregation, selection of counsel, fact gathering, and finality (via issue and claim preclusion)—rather than trial on the merits in any conventional sense of the term. In some high-stakes criminal cases and a fraction of civil cases, jury trial will surely continue well into the twenty-first century. Wall-to-wall media coverage …
Lawyers' Ethics Beyond The Vanishing Trial: Unrepresented Claimaints, De Facto Aggregations, Arbitration Mandates, And Privatized Processes, Judith Resnik
Fordham Law Review
Trials are a vivid variable in the world of litigation, as reflected in the title of this colloquium, Civil Litigation Ethics at a Time of Vanishing Trials. The conveners have wisely drawn attention to the disjuncture between legal ethics and today’s litigation world. In this Introduction, I argue that the challenges for lawyers loom larger than those reflected in the declining rate of trials. More facets of contemporary dispute resolution need to be engaged when contemplating the topics and roles that legal ethics need to address in the decades to come.
Mass Torts And The Pursuit Of Ethical Finality, Lynn A. Baker
Mass Torts And The Pursuit Of Ethical Finality, Lynn A. Baker
Fordham Law Review
Judges, lawyers, and academics largely agree that comprehensive finality is a central goal of mass tort litigation and settlements. More controversial is whether such finality is normatively preferable, inherently ethically problematic, or can be achieved through nonclass aggregate settlements without running afoul of the existing ethics rules. This Article joins this important debate.
Settlement In The Absence Of Anticipated Adjudication, Howard M. Erichson
Settlement In The Absence Of Anticipated Adjudication, Howard M. Erichson
Fordham Law Review
This Article begins with an account of the lawyer’s role in settlement in what we might call the traditional litigation scenario—that is, litigation in which settlement negotiations are conducted in the shadow of anticipated adjudication. This Article then considers four scenarios in which the anticipation of adjudication is altered—resource inadequacy, judicial settlement pressure, lengthy calendar, and class actions not certified for litigation—and asks what effect we should expect each scenario to have on the interests of lawyers and clients regarding settlement. The final part asks what light this analysis sheds on the phenomenon of vanishing trials and concludes with a …
Demosprudence On Trial: Ethics For Movement Lawyers, In Ferguson And Beyond, Justin Hansford
Demosprudence On Trial: Ethics For Movement Lawyers, In Ferguson And Beyond, Justin Hansford
Fordham Law Review
This Article suggests that although civil litigation remains a viable tool, the vanishing trial has limited impact on movement lawyers because we can use the law to promote social change outside of the courtroom. The demosprudence framework helps us to understand this process. By applying this framework to the movement lawyering context, movement lawyers can adapt to the void in voice created by the vanishing trial in civil litigation and still help the movement.
The Public Believes Predispute Binding Arbitration Clauses Are Unjust: Ethical Implications For Dispute-System Design In The Time Of Vanishing Trials, Victor D. Quintanilla, Alexander B. Avtgis
The Public Believes Predispute Binding Arbitration Clauses Are Unjust: Ethical Implications For Dispute-System Design In The Time Of Vanishing Trials, Victor D. Quintanilla, Alexander B. Avtgis
Fordham Law Review
Drawing on these findings, we discuss the pressing need for a wider ethic that applies to transactional attorneys who design binding arbitration clauses within adhesion contracts. We also draw lessons from behavioral legal ethics and social psychology. These lessons reveal that this wider ethic may be endangered by the situational influences that currently operate within law firms (and in-house) due to these two intersecting patterns. We discuss ways of altering the regulatory environment to encourage the wider ethic to flourish.
Restraining Lawyers: From “Cases” To “Tasks”, Morris A. Ratner
Restraining Lawyers: From “Cases” To “Tasks”, Morris A. Ratner
Fordham Law Review
These regulatory and market mechanisms for restraining lawyers share a common thread but differ in their purposes, efficacy, and fairness. Despite these differences, the growing intensity of their focus, and their possible amplification of each other, suggest the possibility of the emergence of new professional norms that call on litigators to think more deeply and inclusively about value from the perspective of court and client when making litigation choices.
Mass Torts And The Pursuit Of Ethical Finality, Lynn A. Baker
Mass Torts And The Pursuit Of Ethical Finality, Lynn A. Baker
Fordham Law Review
Judges, lawyers, and academics largely agree that comprehensive finality is a central goal of mass tort litigation and settlements. More controversial is whether such finality is normatively preferable, inherently ethically problematic, or can be achieved through nonclass aggregate settlements without running afoul of the existing ethics rules. This Article joins this important debate.
Due Process Without Judicial Process?: Antiadversarialism In American Legal Culture, Norman W. Spaulding
Due Process Without Judicial Process?: Antiadversarialism In American Legal Culture, Norman W. Spaulding
Fordham Law Review
For decades now, American scholars of procedure and legal ethics have remarked upon the death of the jury trial. If jury trial is not in fact dead as an institution for the resolution of disputes, it is certainly “vanishing.” Even in complex litigation, courts tend to facilitate nonadjudicative resolutions—providing sites for aggregation, selection of counsel, fact gathering, and finality (via issue and claim preclusion)—rather than trial on the merits in any conventional sense of the term. In some high-stakes criminal cases and a fraction of civil cases, jury trial will surely continue well into the twenty-first century. Wall-to-wall media coverage …
A Tort In Search Of A Remedy: Prying Open The Courthouse Doors For Legal Malpractice Victims, Susan S. Fortney
A Tort In Search Of A Remedy: Prying Open The Courthouse Doors For Legal Malpractice Victims, Susan S. Fortney
Fordham Law Review
Using this broad connotation of justice, this Article questions whether many victims of legal malpractice are denied access to justice. In writing about the regulatory function of legal malpractice as a tort, Professor John Leubsdorf argues that legal malpractice relates to three important functions of the law of lawyering: “[D]elineating the duties of lawyers, creating appropriate incentives and disincentives for lawyers in their dealings with clients and others, and providing access to remedies for those injured by improper lawyer behavior.” Arguably, persons injured by lawyer misconduct are denied access to justice if our civil liability system does not provide them …
A Tort In Search Of A Remedy: Prying Open The Courthouse Doors For Legal Malpractice Victims, Susan S. Fortney
A Tort In Search Of A Remedy: Prying Open The Courthouse Doors For Legal Malpractice Victims, Susan S. Fortney
Fordham Law Review
Using this broad connotation of justice, this Article questions whether many victims of legal malpractice are denied access to justice. In writing about the regulatory function of legal malpractice as a tort, Professor John Leubsdorf argues that legal malpractice relates to three important functions of the law of lawyering: “[D]elineating the duties of lawyers, creating appropriate incentives and disincentives for lawyers in their dealings with clients and others, and providing access to remedies for those injured by improper lawyer behavior.” Arguably, persons injured by lawyer misconduct are denied access to justice if our civil liability system does not provide them …