Legal Remedies Commons^™

Exploring The Role Of Mandatory Mediation In Civil Justice, Nayha Acharya

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In this article, I offer a framing of the debates around mandatory mediation that rest on the premise that a legitimate civil justice process depends on unhindered access to an adjudicative system, which must be recognized as a procedural right. This is a keystone of the rule of law, and a valid legal system that deserves the authority that it asserts is contingent on this. My central thesis is that requiring mediation (which is independent of the rule of law) before allowing full access to adjudication compromises the procedural rights of legal subjects, and the rule of law principle. Such …

Preliminary Damages, Gideon Parchomovsky, Alex Stein

All Faculty Scholarship

Historically, the law helped impecunious plaintiffs overcome their inherent disadvantage in civil litigation. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case: modern law has largely abandoned the mission of assisting the least well off. In this Essay, we propose a new remedy that can dramatically improve the fortunes of poor plaintiffs and thereby change the errant path of the law: preliminary damages. The unavailability of preliminary damages has dire implications for poor plaintiffs, especially those wronged by affluent individuals and corporations. Resource constrained plaintiffs cannot afford prolonged litigation on account of their limited financial means. Consequently, they are forced to either …

Amicus Brief By Amnesty International And Others, Mark Gibney, Gamze Erdem Türkelli, Ashfaq Khalfan, Paula Litvachky, Ana María Suárez Franco, Sara L. Seck, Sigrun Skogly, Nicolás Carrillo-Santarelli, Jernej Letnar Černič, Tom Mulisa, Nicholas Orago, Wouter Vandenhole, Jingjing Zhang

Reports & Public Policy Documents

On September 2, 2020, six Portuguese youth filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights against 33 countries. The complaint alleges that the respondents have violated human rights by failing to take sufficient action on climate change, and seeks an order requiring them to take more ambitious action.

The complaint relies on Articles 2, 8, and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protect the right to life, right to privacy, and right to not experience discrimination. The complainants claim that their right to life is threatened by the effects of climate change in Portugal such …

Prosecuting Civil Asset Forfeiture On Contingency Fees: Looking For Profit In All The Wrong Places, Louis S. Rulli

All Faculty Scholarship

Civil asset forfeiture has strayed far from its intended purpose. Designed to give law enforcement powerful tools to combat maritime offenses and criminal enterprises, forfeiture laws are now used to prey upon innocent motorists and lawful homeowners who are never charged with crimes. Their only sins are that they are carrying legal tender while driving on busy highways or providing shelter in their homes to adult children and grandchildren who allegedly sold small amounts of low-level drugs. Civil forfeiture abuses are commonplace throughout the country with some police even armed with legal waivers for property owners to sign on the …

How Medicalization Of Civil Rights Could Disappoint, Allison K. Hoffman

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay reflects on Craig Konnoth’s recent Article, Medicalization and the New Civil Rights, which is a carefully crafted and thought-provoking description of the refashioning of civil rights claims into medical rights frameworks. He compellingly threads together many intellectual traditions—from antidiscrimination law to disability law to health law—to illustrate the pervasiveness of the phenomenon that he describes and why it might be productive as a tool to advance civil rights.

This response, however, offers several reasons why medicalization may not cure all that ails civil rights litigation’s pains and elaborates on the potential risks of overinvesting in medical rights-seeking. …

State Standing For Nationwide Injunctions Against The Federal Government, Jonathan R. Nash

Faculty Articles

Recent years have seen a substantial increase of cases in which states seek, and indeed obtain, nationwide injunctions against the federal government. These cases implicate two complicated questions: first, when a state has standing to sue the federal government, and second, when a nationwide injunction is a proper form of relief. For their part, scholars have mostly addressed these questions separately. In this Essay, I analyze the two questions together. Along the way, I identify drawbacks and benefits of nationwide injunctions, as well as settings where nationwide injunctions may be desirable and undesirable. I present arguments that, although I do …

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 Search For A Grand Unified Theory Of Tort Law., Scott Hershovitz

Reviews

Theorists like to do a lot with a little. And not just because simple theories seem more elegant: we deepen our understanding when we learn that disparate phenomena are linked together. In physics, for example, the theory of thermodynamics showed us the relationship between mechanics and heat. In economics, the theory of the firm showed us that, across industries that look nothing alike, a simple principle helps explain the organization of economic activity. Of course, there is no guarantee that the disparate phenomena we suspect are linked actually are. Particle physicists continue to search for a Grand Unified Theory, which …

Empowering Individual Plaintiffs, Alex Stein, Gideon Parchomovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

The individual plaintiff plays a critical—yet, underappreciated—role in our legal system. Only lawsuits that are brought by individual plaintiffs allow the law to achieve the twin goals of efficiency and fairness. The ability of individual plaintiffs to seek justice against those who wronged them deters wrongdoing, ex ante, and in those cases in which a wrong has been committed nevertheless, it guarantees the payment of compensation, ex post. No other form of litigation, including class actions and criminal prosecutions, or even compensation funds, can accomplish the same result. Yet, as we show in this Essay, in many key sectors of …

Can The International Criminal Court Deter Atrocity?, Hyeran Jo, Beth A. Simmons

All Faculty Scholarship

Whether and how violence can be controlled to spare innocent lives is a central issue in international relations. The most ambitious effort to date has been the International Criminal Court (ICC), designed to enhance security and safety by preventing egregious human rights abuses and deterring international crimes. We offer the first systematic assessment of the ICC's deterrent effects for both state and nonstate actors. Although no institution can deter all actors, the ICC can deter some governments and those rebel groups that seek legitimacy. We find support for this conditional impact of the ICC cross-nationally. Our work has implications for …

The Myth Of The Condorcet Winner, Paul H. Edelman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

There is consensus among legal scholars that, when choosing among multiple alternatives, the Condorcet winner, should it exist, is the preferred option. In this essay I will refute that claim, both normatively and positively. In addition, I will suggest that a different approach, based in behavioral economics, might be a more productive way to model the choices that legislatures make among multiple alternatives.

Compensating The Victims Of Japan’S 3-11 Fukushima Disaster, Eric A. Feldman

All Faculty Scholarship

Japan’s March 2011 triple disaster—first a large earthquake, followed by a massive tsunami and a nuclear meltdown—caused a devastating loss of life, damaged and destroyed property, and left hundreds of thousands of people homeless, hurt, and in need. This article looks at the effort to address the financial needs of the victims of the 3/11 disaster by examining the role of public and private actors in providing compensation, describing the types of groups and individuals for whom compensation is available, and analyzing the range of institutions through which compensation has been allocated. The story is in some ways cause for …

Public Law At The Cathedral: Enjoining The Government, Michael T. Morley

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Federal Judicial Center International Litigation Guide: Recognition And Enforcement Of Foreign Judgments, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

This publication was prepared for the U.S. Federal Judicial Center as a guide for Federal Judges on the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments. It covers applicable law in federal courts, the issues raised when a foreign judgments recognition case, grounds for non-recognition (and their sources in the law), and recent developments that may affect future adjustments in the rules. The law in those states that have adopted one of the Uniform Acts is covered, as is the law in states that remain under a common law system for recognition and enforcement of judgments. Also covered is the 2005 Hague …

The Promises Of Freedom: The Contemporary Relevance Of The Thirteenth Amendment, William M. Carter Jr.

Articles

This article, an expanded version of the author's remarks at the 2013 Honorable Clifford Scott Green Lecture at the Temple University Beasley School of Law, illuminates the history and the context of the Thirteenth Amendment. This article contends that the full scope of the Thirteenth Amendment has yet to be realized and offers reflections on why it remains an underenforced constitutional norm. Finally, this article demonstrates the relevance of the Thirteenth Amendment to addressing contemporary forms of racial inequality and subordination.

Unenforceability, Lee Petherbridge Ph.D., Jason Rantanen, R. Polk Wagner

All Faculty Scholarship

The patent doctrine of inequitable conduct—which allows a patent to be held unenforceable on the basis of misbehavior by the applicant during patent prosecution—has been the subject of intense criticism from the bench and bar alike. And yet to date there has been no systematic attempt to determine whether the doctrine is or is not working as theorized. This study fills that gap. We evaluate the performance of the inequitable conduct doctrine with a novel methodological approach: by empirically characterizing the differences between patents found unenforceable and several other types of patents (unlitigated, litigated, invalid, obvious, and underdisclosed), we use …

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 …

What Does Tort Law Do? What Can It Do?, Scott Hershovitz

Articles

It’s not hard to describe what tort law does. As a first approximation, we might say that tort empowers those who suffer certain sorts of injuries or invasions to seek remedies from those who brought about those injuries or invasions. The challenge is to explain why tort does that, or to explain what tort is trying to do when it does that. After all, it is not obvious that we should have an institution specially concerned with the injuries and invasions that count as torts.

Corrective Justice For Civil Recourse Theorists, Scott Hershovitz

Articles

Though I think the civil recourse critique of the leading conceptions of corrective justice is in some respects misguided, I do not want to join up to the thrust and parry here. My aim in this Article is to show that there is a better conception of corrective justice than the ones that Goldberg and Zipursky target, that this conception of corrective justice is untouched by the civil recourse critique, and that civil recourse is best understood as a corrective justice account of tort. In other words, I aim to explain corrective justice for civil recourse theorists.

The Legacy Of The 9/11 Fund And The Minnesota I-35w Bridge-Collapse Fund: Creating A Template For Compensating Victims Of Future Mass-Tort Catastrophes, Michael K. Steenson

Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this article is to analyze and compare the 9/11 Fund and the Minnesota bridge-collapse compensation scheme for purposes of illustrating the necessary components of any future compensation schemes legislatures consider adopting in cases involving other catastrophes. This article first sets out the primary issues that must be addressed when considering a compensation scheme. It then examines the choices made in the 9/11 Fund and Minnesota’s bridge-collapse compensation scheme. A brief comparison of the two compensation schemes follows to provide the framework for considering the components of future compensation schemes.

Compliance With Advance Directives: Wrongful Living And Tort Law Incentives, Holly Fernandez Lynch, Michele Mathes, Nadia N. Sawicki

All Faculty Scholarship

Modern ethical and legal norms generally require that deference be accorded to patients' decisions regarding treatment, including decisions to refuse life-sustaining care, even when patients no longer have the capacity to communicate those decisions to their physicians. Advance directives were developed as a means by which a patient's autonomy regarding medical care might survive such incapacity. Unfortunately, preserving patient autonomy at the end of life has been no simple task. First, it has been difficult to persuade patients to prepare for incapacity by making their wishes known. Second, even when they have done so, there is a distinct possibility that …

Brown’S Legacy: The Promises And Pitfalls Of Judicial Relief, Deborah Jones Merritt

The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law Working Paper Series

Brown v. Board of Education marked a turning point for both civil rights and judicial activism. During the half century since Brown, social activists of all kinds have sought policy changes from the courts rather than legislatures. That trend has produced social benefits but, over time, it has also shifted political power to elites. This essay explores the possibility of retaining Brown's promise for racial equality while reinvigorating an electoral politics that would better represent many of the people Brown intended to benefit.

Punitive Damages Revisited: Taking The Rationale For Non-Recognition Of Foreign Judgments Too Far, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

Punitive damages have been a controversial aspect of U.S. law; often criticized both at home and abroad. Neither U.S. law on punitive damages nor the foreign climate regarding their reception has remained static. This article notes the continuing legislative attack on punitive damages in the United States at both the state and federal level, and focuses on recent developments in case law and treaty negotiations concerning the reception of punitive damages abroad.

The Recently Revised Marriage Law Of China: The Promise And The Reality, Charles J. Ogletree Jr., Rangita De Silva De Alwis

All Faculty Scholarship

In April 2001, the Standing Committee of the Ninth National People's Congress (NPC), China's highest legislative body, passed the long-debated and much awaited amendments to the Marriage Law on the closing day of its twenty-first session. As stated by one PRC commentator, "In the 50 years since the founding of the New China, there has not been any law that has caused such a widespread concern for ordinary people."'

Even though the recent revisions to the marriage laws have been hailed as some of the most significant and positive changes in family law in China, thus far no empirical evaluation …

The Bitter With The Sweet: Tradition, History, And Limitations On Federal Judicial Power--A Case Study, Stephen B. Burbank

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Epstein's Property, Emily Sherwin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In an era of skepticism about common law traditions and sensitivity to claims of distributive injustice, Richard Epstein has been an unflinching defender of private property rights. He has insisted that property rights are intelligible, and reminded us of their importance to social and economic welfare. In this paper, I shall offer what I believe is a friendly interpretation of Epstein's writings on property, and then pose some internal questions about the approach he has outlined. I begin with a quick summary of his description of property rights in an ideal legal regime.

The Futures Problem, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

Perhaps the most difficult problem in addressing mass torts is that of future claimants. "Futures" are those who do not now have claims, because injury has not been sufficiently manifested, but who may well have claims in the future. The Supreme Court's decisions in Amchem and Ortiz appear to have foredoomed any procedural mechanism by which to resolve future claims. This, in turn, will leave defendants in mass tort cases with greatly reduced incentives to participate in mass settlement. That implication makes the possibility of reforms in substantive law perhaps more attractive. In addition, these decisions invite further questions about …

Epstein And Levmore: Objections From The Right?, Emily Sherwin, Maimon Schwarzschild

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Book Review, Richard B. Collins

Publications

No abstract provided.