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Full-Text Articles in Law
Plaintiffs' Process: Civil Procedure, Mdl, And A Day In Court, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, Abbe R. Gluck
Plaintiffs' Process: Civil Procedure, Mdl, And A Day In Court, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, Abbe R. Gluck
Scholarly Works
The article focuses on the concept of "plaintiffs process" within the field of civil procedure. It discusses how civil procedure doctrine has traditionally been defendant-centric, focusing on the rights and protections of defendants in legal cases. It examines the role of multidistrict litigation (MDL) in this context and how it impacts plaintiffs rights and access to the courts.
Rwu Law News: The Newsletter Of Roger Williams University School Of Law 04-2021, Michael M. Bowden, Barry Bridges, Political Roundtable
Rwu Law News: The Newsletter Of Roger Williams University School Of Law 04-2021, Michael M. Bowden, Barry Bridges, Political Roundtable
Life of the Law School (1993- )
No abstract provided.
2nd Annual Women In Law Leadership Lecture: A Fireside Chat With Debra Katz, Esq. 03-03-2021, Roger Williams University School Of Law
2nd Annual Women In Law Leadership Lecture: A Fireside Chat With Debra Katz, Esq. 03-03-2021, Roger Williams University School Of Law
School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events
No abstract provided.
A Fiduciary Judge's Guide To Awarding Fees In Class Actions, Brian T. Fitzpatrick
A Fiduciary Judge's Guide To Awarding Fees In Class Actions, Brian T. Fitzpatrick
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
It is often said that judges act as fiduciaries for the absent class members in class action litigation. If we take this seriously, how then should judges award fees to the lawyers who represent these class members? The answer is to award fees the same way rational class members would want if they could do it on their own. In this Essay, I draw on economic models and data from the market for legal representation of sophisticated clients to describe what these fee practices should look like. Although more data from sophisticated clients is no doubt needed, what we do …
Law School News: Adjunct Professor Of The Year: David Coombs 05-13-2020, Michael M. Bowden
Law School News: Adjunct Professor Of The Year: David Coombs 05-13-2020, Michael M. Bowden
Life of the Law School (1993- )
No abstract provided.
Litigation Academy Helps Lawyers Hone Skills 4-30-2018, Katie Mulvaney, Roger Williams University School Of Law
Litigation Academy Helps Lawyers Hone Skills 4-30-2018, Katie Mulvaney, Roger Williams University School Of Law
Life of the Law School (1993- )
No abstract provided.
Rwu First Amendment Blog: David Logan's Blog: Donald Trump And The Full-Employment-For-Lawyers Presidency, David A. Logan
Rwu First Amendment Blog: David Logan's Blog: Donald Trump And The Full-Employment-For-Lawyers Presidency, David A. Logan
Law School Blogs
No abstract provided.
Newsroom: Trump: Full Employment For Lawyers 04-04-2017, David Logan
Newsroom: Trump: Full Employment For Lawyers 04-04-2017, David Logan
Life of the Law School (1993- )
No abstract provided.
Newsroom: Logan On Trump And Libel Law 01-03-2017, Roger Williams University School Of Law
Newsroom: Logan On Trump And Libel Law 01-03-2017, Roger Williams University School Of Law
Life of the Law School (1993- )
No abstract provided.
A Prescription For Overcoming Gender Inequity In Complex Litigation: An Idea Whose Time Has Come, Suzette M. Malveaux
A Prescription For Overcoming Gender Inequity In Complex Litigation: An Idea Whose Time Has Come, Suzette M. Malveaux
Publications
No abstract provided.
Trending @ Rwu Law: Professor Niki Kuckes's Post: Video Highlights Litigation Academy: September 20, 2016, Niki Kuckes
Trending @ Rwu Law: Professor Niki Kuckes's Post: Video Highlights Litigation Academy: September 20, 2016, Niki Kuckes
Law School Blogs
No abstract provided.
Trending @ Rwu Law: Dean Yelnosky's Post: United States Court Of Appeals For Veterans Claims Visits Rwu Law: 03-03-2016, Michael Yelnosky
Trending @ Rwu Law: Dean Yelnosky's Post: United States Court Of Appeals For Veterans Claims Visits Rwu Law: 03-03-2016, Michael Yelnosky
Law School Blogs
No abstract provided.
Managerial Judging And Substantive Law, Tobias Barrington Wolff
Managerial Judging And Substantive Law, Tobias Barrington Wolff
All Faculty Scholarship
The figure of the proactive jurist, involved in case management from the outset of the litigation and attentive throughout the proceedings to the impact of her decisions on settlement dynamics -- a managerial judge -- has displaced the passive umpire as the dominant paradigm in the federal district courts. Thus far, discussions of managerial judging have focused primarily upon values endogenous to the practice of judging. Procedural scholarship has paid little attention to the impact of the underlying substantive law on the parameters and conduct of complex proceedings.
In this Article, I examine the interface between substantive law and managerial …
Locking The Doors To Discovery? Assessing The Effects Of Twombly And Iqbal On Access To Discovery, Jonah B. Gelbach
Locking The Doors To Discovery? Assessing The Effects Of Twombly And Iqbal On Access To Discovery, Jonah B. Gelbach
All Faculty Scholarship
Many observers believe the Supreme Court’s Twombly and Iqbal opinions have curtailed access to civil justice. But previous empirical studies looking only at Rule 12(b)(6) grant rates have failed to capture the full effect of these cases because they have not accounted for party selection—changes in party behavior that can be expected following changes in pleading standards. In this Note, I show how party selection can be expected to undermine the empirical usefulness of simple grant-rate comparisons. I then use a conceptual model of party behavior that allows me to derive an adjusted measure of Twombly/Iqbal’s impact and show …
Evaluating And Improving The Mdl Process, Francis Mcgovern, John G. Heyburn
Evaluating And Improving The Mdl Process, Francis Mcgovern, John G. Heyburn
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Hearings, Mark Spottswood
Hearings, Mark Spottswood
Faculty Working Papers
This article explores a constantly recurring procedural question: When is fact-finding improved by a live hearing, and when would it be better to rely on a written record? Unfortunately, when judges, lawyers, and rulemakers consider this issue, they are led astray by the widely shared—but false—assumption that a judge can best determine issues of credibility by viewing the demeanor of witnesses while they are testifying. In fact, a large body of scientific evidence indicates that judges are more likely to be deceived by lying or mistaken witnesses when observing their testimony in person than if the judges were to review …
Litigation And The Optimal Combination Of Vague And Precise Clauses In Contracts, Alvaro E. Bustos
Litigation And The Optimal Combination Of Vague And Precise Clauses In Contracts, Alvaro E. Bustos
Faculty Working Papers
In this paper we determine the optimal combination of precise and vague clauses written in contracts when the parties face writing and enforcement costs, the second ones in the form of litigation. We show that the parties may prefer to write vague instead of precise clauses not only because they are cheaper to write but also because they are cheaper to enforce. We extend Battigalli and Maggi (2002) to model the decision of a principal who chooses clauses to describe the actions that an agent has to perform. As both players observe nature imperfectly they may call for a court …
Judging Judges And Dispute Resolution Processes, John M. Lande
Judging Judges And Dispute Resolution Processes, John M. Lande
Faculty Publications
This article critiques Professor Chris Guthrie's lead symposium article entitled, "Misjudging." Guthrie's article makes two major arguments. The first is a descriptive, empirical argument that judges are prone to error because of three types of "blinders" and that people underestimate the amount of such judicial error. The second argument is prescriptive, recommending that, because of these judicial blinders, disputants should consider using non-judicial dispute resolution processes generally, and particularly facilitative mediation and arbitration.This article critiques both arguments. It notes that, although Guthrie presents evidence that judges do make the kinds of errors that he describes, his article does not address …
An External Perspective On The Nature Of Noneconomic Compensatory Damages And Their Regulation, Ronald J. Allen, Alexia Brunet, Susan Spies Roth
An External Perspective On The Nature Of Noneconomic Compensatory Damages And Their Regulation, Ronald J. Allen, Alexia Brunet, Susan Spies Roth
Publications
No abstract provided.
Train Our Jurors, Jonathan Koehler
Train Our Jurors, Jonathan Koehler
Faculty Working Papers
Lay jurors are often legally and logically unprepared for trial. In response, it is recommended that jurors receive training in how to make better legal decisions. This chapter suggests that jurors should receive comprehensive training in critical legal doctrines and in how to reason with legal evidence. Jurors who cannot be trained to achieve minimal levels of competence (in the law or in basic reasoning) should be excused from jury service. Suggestions are given as to how policy makers and researchers who are interested in jury reform may wish to proceed.
Valuation Averaging: A New Procedure For Resolving Valuation Disputes, Keith Sharfman
Valuation Averaging: A New Procedure For Resolving Valuation Disputes, Keith Sharfman
Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers
In this Article, Professor Sharfman addresses the problem of "discretionary valuation": that courts resolve valuation disputes arbitrarily and unpredictably, thus harming litigants and society. As a solution, he proposes the enactment of "valuation averaging," a new procedure for resolving valuation disputes modeled on the algorithmic valuation processes often agreed to by sophisticated private firms in advance of any dispute. He argues that by replacing the discretion of judges and juries with a mechanical valuation process, valuation averaging would cause litigants to introduce more plausible and conciliatory valuations into evidence and thereby reduce the cost of valuation litigation and increase the …
Jurors, Judges, And The Mistreatment Of Risk By The Courts, W. Kip Viscusi
Jurors, Judges, And The Mistreatment Of Risk By The Courts, W. Kip Viscusi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
A sample of almost 500 jury-eligible citizens considered a series of experimental situations involving accidents. The juror sample did not properly apply negligence rules, as their errors were particularly great for low-probability, large-loss cases. They also penalized corporations for undertaking corporate risk analyses that seek to trade off cost versus risk reduction benefits. Jurors' damages assessments were also more prone to error than were responses by a sample of state judges. Judges were less prone to erroneous risk beliefs and less subject to the zero-risk mentality.
A More Complete Look At Complexity, Jeffrey W. Stempel
A More Complete Look At Complexity, Jeffrey W. Stempel
Scholarly Works
The ability of courts to successfully resolve complex cases has been a matter of contentious debate, not only for the last quarter-century, but for most of the twentieth century. This debate has been part of the legal landscape at least since Judge Jerome Frank's polemic book from which this Symposium derives its title, and probably since Roscoe Pound's famous address to the American Bar Association. During the 1980s and 1990s in particular, the battlelines of the pro-and anti-court debate have been brightly drawn. Some commentators, most reliably successful plaintiffs' counsel and politically liberal academics, defend the judicial track record in …
The Rehnquist Court, Statutory Interpretation, Inertial Burdens, And A Misleading Version Of Democracy, Jeffrey W. Stempel
The Rehnquist Court, Statutory Interpretation, Inertial Burdens, And A Misleading Version Of Democracy, Jeffrey W. Stempel
Scholarly Works
No one theory or school of thought consistently dominates judicial application of statutes, but the basic methodology employed by courts seems well-established if not always well-defined. Most mainstream judges and lawyers faced with a statutory construction task will look at (although with varying emphasis) the text of the statute, the legislative history of the provision, the context of the enactment, evident congressional purpose, and applicable agency interpretations, often employing the canons of construction for assistance. Although orthodox judicial thought suggests that the judge's role is confined to discerning textual meaning or directives of the enacting legislature, courts also often examine …
Pitfalls Of Public Policy: The Case Of Arbitration Agreements, Jeffrey W. Stempel
Pitfalls Of Public Policy: The Case Of Arbitration Agreements, Jeffrey W. Stempel
Scholarly Works
As the juxtaposition of these quotations suggests, judges have long held disparate views on the legitimacy and value of “public policy” considerations as a basis for legal decision making. The popular notion posits that Justice Holmes and legal realists carried the day, making public policy analysis an ordinary part of the adjudication process. The story, of course, is more complex than this legal version of Don Quixote. Many judges and lawyers, including Justice Holmes in other writings, continued to speak of adjudication in more formalist and positivist terms, with most laypersons in apparent agreement. Judge Burroughs' view of public policy …
A Distorted Mirror: The Supreme Court's Shimmering View Of Summary Judgment, Directed Verdict, And The Value Of Adjudication, Jeffrey W. Stempel
A Distorted Mirror: The Supreme Court's Shimmering View Of Summary Judgment, Directed Verdict, And The Value Of Adjudication, Jeffrey W. Stempel
Scholarly Works
As almost anyone alive during the past decade knows, this is the era of the ‘litigation explosion,’ or there is at least the perception that a litigation explosion exists. Although all agree that the absolute number of lawsuits has increased in virtually every corner of the state and federal court systems, there exists vigorous debate about whether the increase is unusual in relative or historical terms and even more vigorous debate about whether the absolute increase in cases symbolizes the American concern for fairness and justice or represents a surge in frivolous or trivial disputes needlessly clogging the courts. As …