Law Commons^™

Regulatory Litigation In The European Union: Does The U.S. Class Action Have A New Analogue?, S. I. Strong

Faculty Publications

This article is the first to consider the European resolution from a regulatory perspective, using a combination of new governance theory and equivalence functionalism to determine whether the European Union has adopted or is in the process of adopting a form of regulatory litigation. In so doing, the article considers a number of issues, including the basic definition of regulatory litigation, how class and collective relief can act as a regulatory mechanism and the special problems that arise when regulatory litigation is used in the transnational context. The article also includes a normative element, providing a number of suggestions on …

Regulatory Litigation In The European Union: Does The U.S. Class Action Have A New Analogue?, S. I. Strong

Faculty Articles

The United States has long embraced the concept of regulatory litigation, whereby individual litigants, often termed “private attorneys general,” are allowed to enforce certain public laws as a matter of institutional design. Although several types of regulatory litigation exist, the U.S. class action is often considered the paradigmatic model for this type of private regulation.

For years, the United States appeared to be the sole proponent of both regulatory litigation and large-scale litigation. However, in February 2012, the European Union dramatically reversed its existing policies toward mass claims resolution when the European Parliament adopted a resolution proposing to create a …

The Irony Of At&T V. Concepcion, Colin P. Marks

Faculty Articles

Irony is defined as, “the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning.” Though many other definitions of the word exist, in light of the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in AT&T v. Concepcion, this definition comes to mind. Read broadly, the decision strikes a blow to the ability of consumers to bring suits against companies, both inside and outside of arbitration. But that was not the intent behind the federal act which the Court relied upon to justify its decision.

In 1925, when Congress passed the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), its intended …

Tainted Love: An Increasingly Odd Arbitral Infatuation In Derogation Of Sound And Consistent Jurisprudence, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Predicting Securities Fraud Settlements And Amounts: A Hierarchical Bayesian Model Of Federal Securities Class Action Lawsuits, Blakeley M. Mcshane, Oliver P. Watson, Sean J. Griffith, Tom Baker

Faculty Scholarship

This article develops models that predict the incidence and amount of settlements for federal class action securities fraud litigation in the post-PLSRA period. We build hierarchical Bayesian models using data that come principally from Riskmetrics and identify several important predictors of settlement incidence (e.g., the number of different types of securities associated with a case, the company return during the class period) and settlement amount (e.g., market capitalization, measures of newsworthiness). Our models also allow us to estimate how the circuit court a case is filed in as well as the industry of the plaintiff firm associate with settlement outcomes. …

Secret Class Action Settlements, Rhonda Wasserman

Articles

This Article analyzes the phenomenon of secret class action settlements. To illustrate the practice, Part I undertakes a case study of a class action lawsuit that recently settled under seal. Part II seeks to ascertain the scope of the practice. Part II.A examines newspaper accounts describing class action settlements from around the country. Part II.B focuses on a single federal judicial district – the Western District of Pennsylvania – and seeks to ascertain the percentage of suits filed as class actions that were settled under seal. Having gained some understanding of the scope of the practice, the Article then seeks …

The Structural Role Of Private Enforcement Mechanisms In Public Law, J. Maria Glover

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The American regulatory system is unique in that it expressly relies upon a diffuse set of regulators, including private parties, rather than upon a centralized bureaucracy, for the effectuation of its substantive aims. In contrast with more traditional conceptions of private enforcement as an ad hoc supplement to public law, this Article argues that private regulation through litigation is an integral part of the structure of the modern regulatory state. Private litigation and the mechanisms that enable it are not merely add-ons to our regulatory regime, much less are they fundamentally at odds with it.

Yet mechanisms of enforcement attendant …