Law Commons^™

The Court And The Private Plaintiff, Elizabeth Beske

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Two seemingly irreconcilable story arcs have emerged from the Supreme Court over the past decade. First, the Court has definitively taken itself out of the business of creating private rights of action under statutes and the Constitution, decrying such moves as relics of an “ancient regime.” Thus, the Supreme Court has slammed the door on its own ability to craft rights of action under federal statutes and put Bivens, which recognized implied constitutional remedies, into an ever-smaller box. The Court has justified these moves as necessary to keep judges from overstepping their bounds and wading into the province of the …

Servotronics, Inc. V. Rolls-Royce Plc And The Boeing Company: Brief Of Professor Yanbai Andrea Wang As Amicus Curiae In Support Of Neither Party, Yanbai Andrea Wang, Michael H. Mcginley

All Faculty Scholarship

Rather than expressing a view on the issues raised and ably briefed by the parties, amicus submits this brief to inform the Court of the scholarly research she has conducted regarding Section 1782 proceedings since this Court’s seminal decision in Intel. As Section 1782 applications have proliferated, the lower courts have struggled to apply the Intel factors as this Court had envisioned. Especially in the context of Section 1782 applications submitted by parties to an international proceeding (as opposed to those made by the international tribunal itself), lower courts have frequently found themselves unable to analyze and apply the …

Brief Of Amici Curiae Scholars Of The Law Of Non-Profit Organizations In Support Of Respondent: Americans For Prosperity Foundation V. Matthew Rodriguez, Nos. 19-251 & 19-255, Ellen P. Aprill, Roger Colinvaux, Sean Delany, James Fishman, Brian D. Galle, Philip Hackney, Jill R. Horwitz, Cindy Lott, Ray D. Madoff, Jill S. Manny, Nancy A. Mclaughlin, Richard Schmalbeck

Amici Briefs

The twelve individuals filing this amicus brief are professors and scholars of the law of nonprofit organizations. No party in this case represents all three of charity’s key stakeholders: charities, states, and taxpayers who underwrite the charities’ funding. Amici are participating in this litigation in order to aid the Court in understanding how these three interests depend on one another. They also attempt to provide a clearer understanding of state supervision of charities and how that supervision related to federal tax law.

Propertizing Fair Use, Abraham Bell, Gideon Parchomovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

In its current form, fair use doctrine provides a personal defense that applies narrowly to the specific use by the specific user. The landmark case of Google v. Oracle, currently pending before the Supreme Court, illustrates why this is problematic. Even if the Court were to rule that Google’s use of Oracle’s Java API’s was fair, the ruling would not protect the numerous parties that developed Java applications for the Android operating system; it would only shelter Google and Google’s particular use. This is not an isolated problem; the per use/per user rule cuts across fair uses of copyrighted …

The Myth Of Morrison: Securities Fraud Litigation Against Foreign Issuers, Robert Bartlett, Matthew D. Cain, Jill E. Fisch, Steven Davidoff Solomon

All Faculty Scholarship

Using a sample of 388 securities fraud lawsuits filed between 2002 and 2017 against foreign issuers, we examine the effect of the Supreme Court's decision in Morrison v. National Australia Bank Ltd. We find that the description of Morrison as a steamroller, substantially ending litigation against foreign issuers, is a myth. Instead, we find that Morrison did not significantly change the type of litigation brought against foreign issuers, which, both before and after this case, focused on foreign issuers with a U.S. listing and substantial U.S. trading volume. Although dismissal rates rose post-Morrison, we find no evidence …

Rights And Retrenchment In The Trump Era, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

All Faculty Scholarship

Our aim in this essay is to leverage archival research, data and theoretical perspectives presented in our book, Rights and Retrenchment: The Counterrevolution against Federal Litigation, as a means to illuminate the prospects for retrenchment in the current political landscape. We follow the scheme of the book by separately considering the prospects for federal litigation retrenchment in three lawmaking sites: Congress, federal court rulemaking under the Rules Enabling Act, and the Supreme Court. Although pertinent data on current retrenchment initiatives are limited, our historical data and comparative institutional perspectives should afford a basis for informed prediction. Of course, little in …

The Logic And Limits Of Event Studies In Securities Fraud Litigation, Jill E. Fisch, Jonah B. Gelbach, Jonathan Klick

All Faculty Scholarship

Event studies have become increasingly important in securities fraud litigation after the Supreme Court’s decision in Halliburton II. Litigants have used event study methodology, which empirically analyzes the relationship between the disclosure of corporate information and the issuer’s stock price, to provide evidence in the evaluation of key elements of federal securities fraud, including materiality, reliance, causation, and damages. As the use of event studies grows and they increasingly serve a gatekeeping function in determining whether litigation will proceed beyond a preliminary stage, it will be critical for courts to use them correctly.

This Article explores an array of …

Scott V. Harris And The Future Of Summary Judgment, Tobias Barrington Wolff

All Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court’s decision in Scott v. Harris has quickly become a staple in many Civil Procedure courses, and small wonder. The cinematic high-speed car chase complete with dash-cam video and the Court’s controversial treatment of that video evidence seem tailor-made for classroom discussion. As is often true with instant classics, however, splashy first impressions can mask a more complex state of affairs. At the heart of Scott v. Harris lies the potential for a radical doctrinal reformation: a shift in the core summary judgment standard undertaken to justify a massive expansion of interlocutory appellate jurisdiction in qualified immunity cases. …

Federal Securities Fraud Litigation As A Lawmaking Partnership, Jill E. Fisch

All Faculty Scholarship

In its most recent Halliburton II decision, the Supreme Court rejected an effort to overrule its prior decision in Basic Inc. v. Levinson. The Court reasoned that adherence to Basic was warranted by principles of stare decisis that operate with “special force” in the context of statutory interpretation. This Article offers an alternative justification for adhering to Basic—the collaboration between the Court and Congress that has led to the development of the private class action for federal securities fraud. The Article characterizes this collaboration as a lawmaking partnership and argues that such a partnership offers distinctive lawmaking advantages. …

Discretion In Class Certification, Tobias Barrington Wolff

All Faculty Scholarship

A district court has broad discretion in deciding whether a suit may be maintained as a class action. Variations on this phrase populate the class action jurisprudence of the federal courts. The power of the federal courts to exercise discretion when deciding whether to permit a suit to proceed as a class action has long been treated as an elemental component of a representative proceeding. It is therefore cause for surprise that there is no broad consensus regarding the nature and definition of this judicial discretion in the certification process. The federal courts have not coalesced around a clear or …