Civil Law Commons^™

Class Action Cy Pres: A Call For Reform Amidst Inconsistency And Criticism, Emily Potucek

Lewis & Clark Law Review

The prevalence of cy pres awards in class action settlements has increased remarkably in the last several decades. However as class action cy pres practice has become more commonplace, so have the concerns for its propriety in the class action context. Indeed because these concerns were recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court without further clarity on how, and whether, they can be alleviated, the viability of class action cy pres practice is uncertain. In response to this uncertainty, this Comment presents an exhaustive inquiry into cy pres practice in class action settlements. It demonstrates that while certain courts’ cy pres …

Alexander Forrester's Chancery Reports, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

This is a new edition of Alexander Forrester's Chancery reports. It is based upon the best manuscript copy that has survived, Lincoln's Inn MSS. Misc. 52 and Misc. 54, and the first printed edition. The edition that was first published in 1741 included only the cases from 1732 to 1739. Compared to the copy in Lincoln's Inn, they are not much different in quality from each other. The cases in the 1741 edition are the basis for this edition as far as they go. The learned apparatus of the third edition by John Griffith Williams (d. 1799) has not been …

Data Versus More Data In Multidistrict Litigation, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

Scholarly Works

A reply to Lynn A. Baker & Andrew Bradt, Anecdotes in the Search for Truth About Multidistrict Litigation, 107 Cornell Law Review Online 249 (2023).

Perceptions of Justice in Multi-district Litigation: Voices from the Crowd presents the results of a study that no one wanted us to do—or help us to do. Professors Lynn Baker and Andrew Bradt would prefer to dismiss as “anecdote” our two-year effort to find and gain the trust of multi-district litigation (MDL) plaintiffs whose attorneys told them not to discuss their case with anyone, including us.

There are decades worth of procedural justice studies …

Mdl For The People, Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

Scholarly Works

By the terms of its own statute and the limits of its constitutional authority, multidistrict litigation (“MDL”) is designed to transfer and coordinate individual lawsuits then return plaintiffs back to their chosen fora for case-specific discovery and trial. Because each plaintiff is present and has her own lawyer, there is no need for the judge to police conflicts of interest or attorney loyalty as in the MDL’s kin, the class action.

But these assumptions do not match the empirical reality. Remand is rare. MDL judges resolve ninety-nine percent of the cases before them. And to some attorneys, the people of …

Lloyd And The Legislative Void: Representative Actions In Transatlantic Context, Suzanne E. Chiodo

All Papers

The Canadian class action regimes have had a strong influence on the development of collective redress procedures in England. Canadian class proceedings legislation provided a model for the competition law class action regime in the UK, and before then, it featured prominently in the Civil Justice Council’s report that recommended the enactment of generic class actions legislation in England. It is fitting, then, that the UK Supreme Court’s recent decision in Lloyd v Google referred to the Canadian jurisprudence on the representative rule, which allows one or more claimants to represent a group with the ‘same interest’. While Lloyd did …

Tawdry Or Honourable? Additional Payments To Representative Plaintiffs In Ontario And Beyond, Suzanne E. Chiodo

All Papers

Additional payments to representative plaintiffs upon the resolution of a class action are widespread in Ontario and elsewhere. However, this subject has received very little attention from appellate courts (at least in Canada), law reformers, and academics. Two conflicting judgments from the Ontario Superior Court have put a spotlight on this practice, however, and it will soon be receiving appellate treatment. The practice has also recently been subject to conflicting appellate decisions in the US. This brings to the fore crucial questions not only about the purpose of such payments, but also about the purposes of class actions in general. …

Harsh Creditor Remedies And The Role Of The Redeemer, Christopher D. Hampson

Fordham Law Review

The concept of the judgment-proof or collection-proof debtor is fundamental to our understanding of civil law and of what distinguishes it from criminal law. But when civil creditors can threaten unduly harsh or cruel debt collection measures (whether legally or not), they extend their reach into the pockets of those whom this Article calls “redeemers,” third parties with a familial or quasi-familial relationship to civil debtors who have reason to pay on their behalf. This Article examines four such measures—imprisonment, homelessness, destitution, and deportation—remedies that sound like they come from another time and place, but which are threatened by some …

Accessing Justice With Zoom: Experiences And Outcomes In Online Civil Courts, Victor D. Quintanilla, Kurt Hugenberg, Ryan Hutchings, Nedim Yel

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The global COVID-19 pandemic brought significant change to our civil justice system, particularly in the rapid shift from in-person to remote court proceedings. Courts across the country, facing the unprecedented challenge of a global health emergency, embraced rapid innovation and the adoption of remote proceeding platforms, such as Zoom and Webex. State courts did so across case types, including within high-volume civil dockets containing evictions, debt collections, small claims, and family law cases, where millions of self-represented and unrepresented litigants encounter the U.S. civil justice system each year. Amid the pandemic, voices converged to encourage these justice innovations, including the …

Advancing Racial Justice Through Civil And Criminal Academic Medical-Legal Partnerships, Yael Cannon, Vida Johnson

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The medical-legal partnership (MLP) model, which brings attorneys and healthcare partners together to remove legal barriers to health, is a growing approach to addressing unmet civil legal needs. But MLPs are less prevalent in criminal defense settings, where they also have the potential to advance both health and legal justice. In fact, grave racial health inequities are deeply intertwined with both civil and criminal injustice. In both spheres, health justice is racial justice. Building on the experiences of the authors in their respective civil and criminal law school clinics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., this Article argues that academic …

Virtual Gaming, Actual Damage: Video Game Design That Intentionally And Successfully Addicts Users Constitutes Civil Battery, Allison Caffarone

Scholarly Works

In recent years, there has been increased academic interest in both the neurological effects of compulsive gaming and the potential tort liability of game developers who scientifically engineer games in order to addict users. Scholars from various disciplines are currently debating the scope and potential solutions to the problems associated with Gaming Disorder, now a globally recognized illness. This article contributes to this discussion by offering a multidisciplinary analysis of the scope of video game addiction, its neurological bases, and its relation to the legal rights and responsibilities of victims and game developers. In addition, this article explores the practical …

Abortion—A Question Of Human Rights, Geoffrey Bennett, Christina M. Lyon

Journal Articles

Unlike the American Supreme Court which has been prepared to acknowledge, confront, and attempt to resolve the many problems associated with abortion, the European Commission of Human Rights in two cases that have only recently been reported has disappointingly side-stepped many of the difficult issues involved, and raised more questions than it answers. Furthermore, the reasoning in these decisions, which are concerned with the interpretation of several of the Articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, is at times vague and curiously ill-argued. The two decisions are first a German case, Bruggeman and Scheuten v Federal Republic of Germany …

The Visible Trial: Judicial Assessment As Adjudication, Tracey E. George, Albert H. Yoon

University of Colorado Law Review

Only a small fraction of lawsuits ends in trial—a phenomenon termed the “vanishing trial.” Critics of the declining trial rate see a remote, increasingly regressive judicial system. Defenders see a system that allows parties to resolve disputes independently. Analyzing criminal and civil filings in federal district court for the forty-year period from 1980 to 2019, we confirm a steady decline in the absolute and relative number of trials. We find, however, this emphasis on trial rate obscures courts’ vital role and ignores parties’ goals. Judges adjudicate disputes directly by ruling or effectively through other assessments of the parties’ cases. Even …

Penggunaan Tanah Masyarakat Untuk Kepentingan Penempatan Tiang Listrik Pln Berdasarkan Perspektif Hukum Perjanjian, Lolita Adhyana Joedo

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

PLN dalam menyalurkan listrik menggunakan tanah milik orang termasuk untuk memasang tiang listrik. Penggunaan tanah tersebut atas ijin dari Pemilik Tanah. Dalam perkembangannya tanah mengalami peralihan hak dan daerah lokasi tiang listrik PLN telah berkembang pesat, yang berdampak masyarakat merasa terganggu dengan kehadiran tiang listrik yang lebih dulu ada, sehingga meminta tiang listrik dipindahkan. Permintaan pindah tiang listrik PLN telah menjadi polemik, karena masyarakat keberatan harus menanggung biaya pindah tiang listrik. Pembebanan biaya tersebut disebabkan pekerjaan pindah tiang listrik membutuhkan biaya pekerjaan dan kompensasi yang harus dibayar oleh PLN kepada masyarakat di area yang terdampak pemadaman listrik akibat permintaan pindah …

Different Countries, Same Homophobia And Transphobia: A Cross-Cultural Survey Of So-Called Conversion Therapy Practices And The Move Toward Legislative Protections For The United States Lgbtq+ Community, Samantha J. Past

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

So-called “conversion therapy” consists of dangerous practices that inflict detrimental, long-lasting effects on its victims. As a form of sexual orientation or gender identity or gender expression change efforts, conversion therapy is fostered by global homophobia and transphobia. Despite formal public rejection and scientific discreditation, conversion therapy providers across the world continue to target LGBTQ+ individuals, predominately under the guise of offering health care services or obeying religious practices. The following piece compares conversion therapy in three countries with recently introduced LGBTQ+ legislation––(1) Ghana; (2) Canada; and (3) the United States (U.S.)–––in order to identify factors furthering conversion therapy and …

Liability Rule Practices Amidst The Property Rule Of Indonesian Capital Market, Adiwarman Adiwarman

Indonesia Law Review

Shareholder protection is the most important legal issue in capital market law. Conflict of interest is one of the corporate actions in the capital market. The property rule requires independent shareholders’ approval for conflicts of interest transactions. The property rule paradigm empowers independent shareholders in the company’s decision-making process. In practice, listed companies violate the property rule and are subject to sanctions, but the rights of shareholders will be reduced due to fines imposed by the capital market authorities. A normative method is used to answer the problem of how does Indonesia enforce the conflict of interest rule in order …

Evaluating The Pro Se Plight: A Comprehensive Review Of Access To Justice Initiatives In Ohio Landlord-Tenant Law, Caleigh M. Harris

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Performatives In Argentine Supreme Court Dissents: A Jurilinguistic Proposal For Civilian Change Based On The American Common Law, Mariano Vitetta

Journal of Civil Law Studies

This article explores a linguistic defect in how Argentine Supreme Court dissents are written. The reader of these dissents has a hard time distinguishing between a majority opinion and a dissenting opinion, because dissents are written “as if” they were deciding the case. The confusion results from the use of performative language in dissents when adherence to reality and a plain-language approach require modal verbs reflecting the language of suggestion. This is actually the way dissents are expressed in the United States, the jurisdiction from which the Argentine Supreme Court copied its constitutional design. To make the case against the …

Bilingual Korean-English Civil Code Of The Democratic People's Republic Or Korea, Joseph Cho

Journal of Civil Law Studies

No abstract provided.

Wells Fargo Bank Minn., Nat’L Ass’N V. Holoway, Arthur H. Pearcy

Journal of Civil Law Studies

No abstract provided.

The Constitutional Reshaping Of South Africa's Succession Laws, François Du Toit

Journal of Civil Law Studies

The South African Constitution of 1996 has had a significant im-pact on all the branches of South African law, including its succes-sion laws. The Constitution has transformatively reshaped im-portant aspects of South Africa's succession laws over the past two-and-a-half decades. This Article surveys the reshaping of two such aspects critically, namely (i) the extension of spousal inheritance under the Intestate Succession Act of 1987 and the Wills Act of 1953 as well as the extension of parental inheritance under the former statute; and (ii) the limitation of testamentary freedom. The afore-mentioned developments occurred by and large at the hands of …

Bilingual English-Spanish Louisiana Civil Code, Book Ii, Mariano Vitetta

Journal of Civil Law Studies

No abstract provided.

Avant-Propos

Journal of Civil Law Studies

No abstract provided.

The Doctrine Of Veil-Piercing Liability In Poland And Selected Countries: A Comparative Law Study, Mariusz Fras

Journal of Civil Law Studies

The separation of a company from its members, based on legal personality, is recognized as one of the fundamental principles of corporate law. It expresses the legal distinction between the two entities. A consequence of the separateness principle is that members are not liable for the debts of their companies, and companies cannot be held liable for the debts of their members. However, such consequences of the principle of mutual autonomy of companies and their members are in sharp contrast with commercial reality, in which intertwined corporate groups operate as a single economic entity. In market transactions, a subsidiary often …

Cover, Masthead & Contents

Journal of Civil Law Studies

No abstract provided.

Penalty Default Rules In Quebec Contract Law, Zackary Goldford

Journal of Civil Law Studies

Few would deny that contract law is filled with default rules, but there has been a great deal of scholarly debate about their purposes and functions. Some American scholars have argued that there are default rules that do not align with most parties’ expectations; indeed, they impose a burden on one or both parties if they are not departed from. Departing from these default rules typically requires one or both parties to share information that they might have otherwise kept to themselves. These have been called “penalty default rules.” While there is a significant amount of scholarship on penalty default …

An Essay On Ideology And Legal Education In Micro Jurisdictions: The Example Of Jersey, David Marrani

Journal of Civil Law Studies

This article explores the question of legal education in micro jurisdictions using the case of Jersey, a British Crown Dependency, positioned geographically, historically and culturally between two larger jurisdictions, France and the UK. It analyses how Jersey’s legal training is pulled towards those large “big neighbours,” rather than focusing on what makes its specificity and attraction. It questions how legal education in micro-jurisdiction is actually linked to ideology. The article starts with the following question: are we taking micro jurisdictions seriously? It then considers the routes to legal qualification in micro jurisdictions, before focusing specifically on the case of Jersey …

Introductory Note To The English Translation Of The Civil Code Of North Korea, Joseph Cho

Journal of Civil Law Studies

No abstract provided.

Codification Of Civil Law In Azerbaijan: History, Current Situation And Development Perspectives, Natig Khalilov

Journal of Civil Law Studies

The Civil Code is the second most important legal act in the country after the Constitution, and the first in terms of volume. Due to its important role in the lives of citizens, the Civil Code is sometimes informally referred to as the “Economic Constitution.” At the same time, the Civil Code is the main document setting the rules for a market economy. This article is devoted to the processes of codification of civil law in Azerbaijan over the past 100 years. During the twentieth century, through the codification of civil law, Azerbaijan has adopted three Civil Codes, far more …

Natural And Artificial Neural Networks: The Chilean Legal Framework, Carlos Amunátegui Perelló

Journal of Civil Law Studies

Neuro-law and neuro-rights are emerging legal fields in the intersection of law, ethics, and technology. The aim of this study is to present the legal and scientific foundations of the matter, highlighting the Chilean regulation model on the problem.

Successions Of Toney, Winston M. Faulk

Journal of Civil Law Studies

No abstract provided.