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The Class Action Fairness Act Of 2005 In Historical Context: A Preliminary View, Stephen B. Burbank

All Faculty Scholarship

As courts confront, and commentators begin to write about, the many jurisdictional questions that emerged from CAFA’s long and messy legislative process, I propose instead to set that legislation in context. The contexts that, given my training and interests, I find most revealing concern the history of federal diversity of citizenship litigation in general and, within that larger story, the history of diversity class actions in federal court. Because all questions of federal court subject matter jurisdiction implicate the "happy relations of States to Nation," both accounts necessarily pay attention to state court litigation and to the impact of doctrinal …