Legal Remedies Commons^™

The Ex Parte Young Cause Of Action: A Riddle, Wrapped In A Mystery, Inside An Enigma, Andrew S. Oldham, Adam I. Steene, John W. Tienken

Northwestern University Law Review

Ex parte Young ushered in a new era of the American judicial system. Most famously, the decision allowed plaintiffs, in certain circumstances, to sue state officials without having to worry about sovereign immunity. Young’s other holding, though perhaps lesser known, is no less important: individuals, the Supreme Court held, have an equitable cause of action to sue government officials for injunctive relief.

Even today, that second holding remains something of a riddle. Did this cause of action always exist in American law? Or was it an invention of the Young Court? And, at any rate, does the Ex parte …

Rethinking Judicial Power & Remedial Restraint, Caprice L. Roberts

Catholic University Law Review

This Article maintains that groundbreaking Supreme Court cases reshaping judicial power and restraint are frequently remedies centric. The much- anticipated ruling in Trump v. CASA illustrates this correlation. Interpreting traditional equity, the Supreme Court circumscribed federal judicial power to issue universal relief. The Court relied on Marbury v. Madison to bolster its reasoning on the limits of judicial power. Ironically, both cases denied any remedy while enhancing the potential for future judicial power. Whether via judicial review and supremacy power or the Court’s future ability to now be the only federal court able to issue universal remedies—the Court’s role in …

Nonparty Protective Relief In The Early Republic: Judicial Power To Annul Letters Patent, James E. Pfander, Mary E. Zakowski

Northwestern University Law Review

Much of the debate over the constitutionality of universal or nonparty protective relief in the federal court system has focused on lessons drawn from historical practice. But with its emphasis on injunctive relief, the literature has largely ignored forms of adjudication that arose outside the courts of equity and led to judgments and decrees affecting the rights of nonparties. As a result, the story of nonparty protective relief has not yet been fully told.

This Article offers a more complete story, highlighting proceedings in which federal courts issued judgments that settled a matter once and for all. Some familiar examples …

How Judicial Accounting Law Fails Occupying Cotenants, Phil Rich

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

Few law students remember judicial accounting law from their property law course, and it’s hard to blame them. This little-discussed body of law is formulaic and rarely addressed by appellate courts. Judicial accounting law, however, should not be ignored. The law, which allocates equity to cotenants (or, more colloquially, co-owners) of residential property upon partition of that property, guides homeowners’ behavior and shifts wealth between them. This Note argues that state legislatures should reform judicial accounting law to better protect those cotenants living in their homes from partitions brought by cotenants living elsewhere.

The problem with judicial accounting law lies …

Withholding Injunctions In Copyright Cases: Impacts Of Ebay, Pamela Samuelson

William & Mary Law Review

Before the Supreme Court’s 2006 decision in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C., which ruled that courts should exercise equitable discretion when considering whether to issue permanent injunctions in patent infringement cases, courts routinely granted injunctions in copyright cases when plaintiffs proved that defendants had infringed or had likely infringed copyrights. Such findings triggered presumptions of irreparable harm, which were almost never rebutted. Only rarely would courts consider a balancing of hardships or effects of injunctions on public interests.

In the first several years after eBay, commentators reported that eBay had had little impact on the availability of injunctive …

Getting Into Equity, Samuel L. Bray, Paul B. Miller

Journal Articles

For two centuries, common lawyers have frequently talked about a “cause of action.” But “cause of action” is not an organizing principle for equity. This Article shows how a plaintiff gets into equity, and it shows equity is shaped by the interplay of its remedial, procedural, and substantive law. Equity is adjectival, related to law rather than the other way around. Remedies, not rights, are what give it power. And for getting into equity, it is the grievance that is central. To insist on an equitable cause of action is to work a fundamental change in how a plaintiff gets …

Standing, Equity, And Injury In Fact, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

This contribution to the Notre Dame Law Review's annual Federal Courts symposium on "The Nature of the Federal Equity Power" asks what the traditions of equity can tell us about Article III standing. I take as my point of departure the observation by Professors Sam Bray and Paul Miller, in their contribution to the symposium, that equity does not have causes of action as such--or at least not in the same way as actions at law. This is potentially important for standing, as many academic critiques of the Supreme Court's standing jurisprudence have argued that standing should turn on whether …

Equity, Law, And The Seventh Amendment, Samuel L. Bray

Journal Articles

The Seventh Amendment requires that the civil jury trial right be “preserved” in “Suits at common law.” Those bits of constitutional text have long set the justices on a path of historical reconstruction. For roughly two centuries, the Supreme Court has determined the scope of the civil jury trial right in federal court by reference to historic English courts. But no one is happy with the current test. In one widely used variant, it requires an inquiry into analogous 1791 actions, followed by an inquiry into the legal or equitable provenance of the remedy sought, and then a weighing that …

Panel Discussion: The Right To Education: With Liberty, Justice, And Education For All?

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Retroactive Adjudication, Samuel Beswick

All Faculty Publications

This Article defends the retroactive nature of judicial lawmaking. Recent Supreme Court judgments have reignited debate on the retroactivity of novel precedent. When a court announces a new rule, does it apply only to future cases or also to disputes arising in the past? This Article shows that the doctrine of non-retroactive adjudication offers no adequate answer. In attempting to articulate a law of non-retroactivity, the Supreme Court has cycled through five flawed frame-works. It has variously characterized adjudicative non-retroactivity as (1) a problem of legal philosophy; (2) a discretionary exercise for balancing competing right and reliance interests; (3) a …

Equity In The Age Of Statutes, Hang Wu Tang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

It has been said that we have moved from a legal system dominated by the common law to one where statutes represent the primary source of the law. Where does that leave equitable jurisprudence in the age of statutes? This article examines the tricky interplay between statute law and equity. It is suggested that there are broadly three categories of cases when the court is considering the application of equitable doctrines in the context of a statute. First, the statute may explicitly or implicitly abolish the application of a relevant equitable doctrine. In this case, the relevant equitable doctrine should …

Three Proposals For Regulating The Distribution Of Home Equity, Ian Ayres, Joshua Mitts

Faculty Scholarship

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s recently-released “qualified mortgage” rules effectively discourage predatory lending but miss an equally important source of systemic risk: low-equity clustering. Specific “volatility-inducing” mortgage terms, when present in a substantial cluster of mortgage contracts, exacerbate macroeconomic risk by increasing the chance that the housing and lending markets will have to absorb a wave of simultaneous defaults after a downturn in housing prices. This Article shows that these terms became prevalent in a substantial proportion of residential mortgages in the years leading up to the home mortgage crisis. In contrast, during the earlier “amortization era” (when mortgagors were …

Scholars’ Supreme Court Amicus Brief In Support Of Neither Party: Petrella V. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Douglas Laycock, Mark P. Gergen, Doug Rendleman

Scholarly Articles

The appeal to the Supreme Court in Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer deals with the equitable defense of plaintiff’s laches before suing for copyright infringement. Laches is unreasonable and prejudicial delay. MGM allegedly violated plaintiff’s copyright repeatedly over a period of many years; the statute of limitations has not run on the most recent violations. Plaintiff argues that laches should never apply to a cause of action with a statute of limitations. Defendant argues that laches should bar all relief if defendant relied on plaintiff’s failure to sue earlier, without having to match defendant’s reliance to the remedies plaintiff seeks.

This scholars’ …

Third Time's The Charm: The Coming Impact Of The Restatement (Third) Restitution And Unjust Enrichment In Bankruptcy, C. Scott Pryor

Pepperdine Law Review

Bankruptcy courts have frequently been characterized as courts of equity. Often this characterization has accompanied unusually relaxed interpretation or application of a provision of the Bankruptcy Code. However, this understanding does not exhaust the meaning of equity in bankruptcy. Historically, equity covered a large range of topics–trusts and estates, injunction, contracts, specific performance, unjust enrichment, restitution, and disgorgement. In addition, equity was not limited to particular remedies. Equity’s remedies certainly included money damages but recognized many more. The law of equity was substantive as well as remedial; it recognized primary rights as well as secondary rights of rectification. Among equity's …

Marvin V. Marvin: The Scope Of Equity With Respect To Non-Marital Relationships, John F. Dellagrotta

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Remedies: A Guide For The Perplexed, Doug Rendleman

Scholarly Articles

Remedies is one of a law student’s most practical courses. Remedies students and their professors learn to work with their eyes on the question at the end of litigation: what can the court do for the successful plaintiff? Remedies develops students’ professional identities and broadens their professional horizons by reorganizing their analysis of procedure, torts, contracts, and property around choosing and measuring relief - compensatory damages, punitive damages, an injunction, specific performance, disgorgement, and restitution. This article discusses the law-school course in Remedies - the content of the Remedies course, the Remedies classroom experience, and Remedies outside the classroom through …

Salinger V. Colting, James Marshall Spector

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Common Law And Equity In R3rue, Lionel Smith

Washington and Lee Law Review

One of the most remarked-upon achievements of the first Restatement of the Law of Restitution was the consolidation into a single treatment of all of the law that concerned the Reporters, whether it came from common law or Equity. In the Restatement (Third) of Restitution & Unjust Enrichment (R3RUE), there was initially an even more dramatic idea: to restate the law without even any reference to the historical distinction between common law and Equity. In the final product, however, there are several references to the peculiarly Equitable origins of certain juridical solutions to the problems addressed by this Restatement. The …

Counter-Restitution For Monetary Remedies In Equity, George P. Roach

Washington and Lee Law Review

Equitable remedies are growing in importance as the remedies of choice for intellectual property and federal agency claims. The measure of monetary remedies in equity is founded in trust law, which provides that even a disloyal trustee is entitled to indemnity for expenses that benefit the trust. Based on this principle and case law on measuring intellectual property remedies, a defendant to a claim for a monetary remedy in equity has the opportunity to prove that the unjust enrichment established by the plaintiff should be reduced for unrelated revenues or beneficial expenses. Opponents of this right justify revenue disgorgement by …

Sliding Towards Educational Outcomes: A New Remedy For High-Stakes Education Lawsuits In A Post-Nclb World, Christopher A. Suarez

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Sheff v. O'Neill ushered in a new wave of education reform litigation that may challenge the constitutionality of de facto segregation under state education clauses, but its remedy has been inadequate. This Note proposes a new desegregation remedy-the sliding scale remedy-to address socioeconomic isolation in this unique constitutional context. The remedy employs varying degrees of equity power depending on students' academic outcomes. It balances concerns over local control and separation of powers with the court's need to effectuate right, establishes a clear remedial principle, and ensures that states and school districts focus on students as they implement remedies.

Limiting Legal Remedies: An Analysis Of Unclean Hands, T. Leigh Anenson

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Law, Markets And Democracy: A Role For Law In The Neo-Liberal State, Alfred C. Aman, Jr.

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Give Them Their Due: An African-American Reparations Program Based On The Native American Federal Aid Model, Mishael A. Danielson, Alexis Pimentel

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Restitution And Equity: An Analysis Of The Principle Of Unjust Enrichment, Emily Sherwin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Administrative Equity: An Analysis Of Exceptions To Administrative Rules, Alfred C. Aman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Profits And Their Recovery, Graham Douthwaite

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Recent Developments, Various Editors

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Exemplary Damages In Equity

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Book Reviews, Willard L. Boyd, Robert Meisenholder, Robert H. Skilton, Charles Seligson, Allan F. Smith, Charles L. B. Lowndes, Elvin E. Overton, Julio Cueto-Rua, W. Paul Gormley, John J. Yeager, James A. Rahl, Carl H. Fulda

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Equity--1959 Tennessee Survey, T. A. Smedley

Vanderbilt Law Review

The amazing versatility of the chancery courts in Tennessee has been demonstrated again in two decisions handed down during the past year; but on the other hand, two cases decided in this interval disclosed evidence of the regrettable "decadence of equity" which Dean Pound deplored more than half a century ago.' In most of the other decisions which may be classified under the ambiguous heading of "Equity," only normal application of established principles to routine situations seems to have been involved.