Law Commons^™

The Democratic (Il)Legitimacy Of Assembly-Line Litigation, Jessica K. Steinberg, Colleen F. Shanahan, Anna E. Carpenter, Alyx Mark

Faculty Scholarship

Millions of debt cases are filed in the civil courts every year. In debt actions, asymmetrical representation is the norm, with the plaintiff almost always represented by counsel and the defendant very rarely so. A number of jurisdictions report that up to ninety-nine percent of defendants in debt cases appear pro se — a figure that calls into question the basic legitimacy of these proceedings.

Professor Daniel Wilf-Townsend’s central contribution to the literature on debt collection, and state civil justice more broadly, is to demonstrate through sophisticated empirics what has long been anecdotally reported: that a cluster of corporate plaintiffs …

The Right And The Reasonable, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

As the common law relies on the concept of "reasonableness," the civil law relies on the concept of "Right." Professor Fletcher argues that reliance on reasonableness enables the common law to develop rules that can be voiced in a single standard. Such rules permit what Professor Fletcher terms 'flat" legal thinking. In contrast, the civil law's reliance on the concept of Right leads it to develop rules that proceed in two stages: the first rule asserts an absolute right; the second, a limitation based upon criteria other than Right. The application of such rules proceeds by what Professor Fletcher terms …