Civil Law Commons^™

Closure Provisions In Mdl Settlements, D. Theodore Rave

Fordham Law Review

Closure has value in mass litigation. Defendants often insist on it as a condition of settlement, and plaintiffs who can deliver it may be able to command a premium. But in multidistrict litigation (MDL), which currently makes up over one-third of the federal docket, closure depends on individual claimants deciding to participate in a global settlement. Accordingly, MDL settlement designers often include terms designed to encourage claimants to opt in to the settlement and discourage them from continuing to litigate. Some of these terms have been criticized as unduly coercive and as benefiting the negotiating parties—the defendant and the lead …

What Does It Mean To Say That Procedure Is Political?, Dana S. Reda

Fordham Law Review

Procedure is not the first field of law to face controversy along these lines. Law’s independence from politics, in both its descriptive and normative aspects, is a century long legal challenge.9 This Article aims to clarify what we mean when we characterize procedure as political, as well as to understand some of the harms generated by failing to confront and acknowledge the political. This is a preliminary step in approaching future formulations of procedural rules if they cannot be depoliticized.

Constraining Monitors, Veronica Root

Fordham Law Review

Part I of this Article explains the failure of recent attempts by courts and legislators to constrain monitor behavior. Part II then argues that one reason for the lack of monitorship regulation lies in the reluctance of bar associations to oversee quasi-legal behavior. It then explains why reputation appears to be the primary factor reigning in monitor behavior today. Part III discusses implications of this Article’s findings. Specifically, it discusses concerns regarding the disclosure of information, the boundaries of the relationship between a monitor and other parties, and the ways a monitor’s identity might be utilized as a sanctioning mechanism. …

Due Process Without Judicial Process?: Antiadversarialism In American Legal Culture, Norman W. Spaulding

Fordham Law Review

For decades now, American scholars of procedure and legal ethics have remarked upon the death of the jury trial. If jury trial is not in fact dead as an institution for the resolution of disputes, it is certainly “vanishing.” Even in complex litigation, courts tend to facilitate nonadjudicative resolutions—providing sites for aggregation, selection of counsel, fact gathering, and finality (via issue and claim preclusion)—rather than trial on the merits in any conventional sense of the term. In some high-stakes criminal cases and a fraction of civil cases, jury trial will surely continue well into the twenty-first century. Wall-to-wall media coverage …

The Bellwether Settlement, Adam S. Zimmerman

Fordham Law Review

This Article examines the use of bellwether mediation in mass litigation. Bellwether mediations are different from bellwether trials,” a practice where parties choose a representative sample of cases for trial to determine how to resolve a much larger number of similar cases. In bellwether mediations, the parties instead rely on a representative sample of settlement outcomes overseen by judges and court-appointed mediators.

It’S Time For An Intervention!: Resolving The Conflict Between Rule 24(A)(2) And Article Iii Standing, Gregory R. Manring

Fordham Law Review

This Note argues that federal courts should employ an approach that is more related to maintaining the benefits of Rule 24 without running afoul of Article III—a task the yes-or-no approach is ill equipped to handle. Ultimately, an approach that is based on employing a standing analysis only where the Case or Controversy Clause is implicated anew allows the greatest access to the intervention device without running the risk of entertaining nonjusticiable disputes.

Lawyers' Ethics Beyond The Vanishing Trial: Unrepresented Claimaints, De Facto Aggregations, Arbitration Mandates, And Privatized Processes, Judith Resnik

Fordham Law Review

Trials are a vivid variable in the world of litigation, as reflected in the title of this colloquium, Civil Litigation Ethics at a Time of Vanishing Trials. The conveners have wisely drawn attention to the disjuncture between legal ethics and today’s litigation world. In this Introduction, I argue that the challenges for lawyers loom larger than those reflected in the declining rate of trials. More facets of contemporary dispute resolution need to be engaged when contemplating the topics and roles that legal ethics need to address in the decades to come.

Mass Torts And The Pursuit Of Ethical Finality, Lynn A. Baker

Fordham Law Review

Judges, lawyers, and academics largely agree that comprehensive finality is a central goal of mass tort litigation and settlements. More controversial is whether such finality is normatively preferable, inherently ethically problematic, or can be achieved through nonclass aggregate settlements without running afoul of the existing ethics rules. This Article joins this important debate.

Civil Trials: A Film Illusion?, Taunya L. Banks

Fordham Law Review

As Judge Elrod’s comments suggest, the most well-known courtroom film classics, like 12 Angry Men, Anatomy of a Murder, or Witness for the Prosecution are about criminal trials. This fact may be unimportant because the distinction between criminal and civil trial films often is lost on the general public. Unanswered is whether the distinction between criminal and civil trials is important when determining the impact of the decline in real-life civil trials on American popular culture and courtroom films in particular. This question is the focus of this Article.

The Public Believes Predispute Binding Arbitration Clauses Are Unjust: Ethical Implications For Dispute-System Design In The Time Of Vanishing Trials, Victor D. Quintanilla, Alexander B. Avtgis

Fordham Law Review

Drawing on these findings, we discuss the pressing need for a wider ethic that applies to transactional attorneys who design binding arbitration clauses within adhesion contracts. We also draw lessons from behavioral legal ethics and social psychology. These lessons reveal that this wider ethic may be endangered by the situational influences that currently operate within law firms (and in-house) due to these two intersecting patterns. We discuss ways of altering the regulatory environment to encourage the wider ethic to flourish.

Restraining Lawyers: From “Cases” To “Tasks”, Morris A. Ratner

Fordham Law Review

These regulatory and market mechanisms for restraining lawyers share a common thread but differ in their purposes, efficacy, and fairness. Despite these differences, the growing intensity of their focus, and their possible amplification of each other, suggest the possibility of the emergence of new professional norms that call on litigators to think more deeply and inclusively about value from the perspective of court and client when making litigation choices.

Closure Provisions In Mdl Settlements, D. Theodore Rave

Fordham Law Review

Closure has value in mass litigation. Defendants often insist on it as a condition of settlement, and plaintiffs who can deliver it may be able to command a premium. But in multidistrict litigation (MDL), which currently makes up over one-third of the federal docket, closure depends on individual claimants deciding to participate in a global settlement. Accordingly, MDL settlement designers often include terms designed to encourage claimants to opt in to the settlement and discourage them from continuing to litigate. Some of these terms have been criticized as unduly coercive and as benefiting the negotiating parties—the defendant and the lead …

Constraining Monitors, Veronica Root

Fordham Law Review

Part I of this Article explains the failure of recent attempts by courts and legislators to constrain monitor behavior. Part II then argues that one reason for the lack of monitorship regulation lies in the reluctance of bar associations to oversee quasi-legal behavior. It then explains why reputation appears to be the primary factor reigning in monitor behavior today. Part III discusses implications of this Article’s findings. Specifically, it discusses concerns regarding the disclosure of information, the boundaries of the relationship between a monitor and other parties, and the ways a monitor’s identity might be utilized as a sanctioning mechanism. …

Erie Step Zero, Alexander A. Reinert

Fordham Law Review

Courts and commentators have assumed that the Erie doctrine, while originating in diversity cases, applies in all cases whatever the basis for federal jurisdiction. Thus, when a federal court asserts jurisdiction over pendent state law claims through the exercise of supplemental jurisdiction in a federal question case, courts regularly apply the Erie doctrine to resolve conflict between federal and state law. This Article shows why this common wisdom is wrong. To understand why, it is necessary to return to Erie’s goals, elaborated over time by the U.S. Supreme Court. Erie and its progeny are steeped in diversity-driven policy concerns: …

Twenty Reasons To Publish In Dignity, Donna M. Hughes

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Against Gay Potemkin Villages: Title Vii And Sexual Orientation Discrimination, Anthony Michael Kreis

All Faculty Scholarship

Should Title VII allow employers to invoke a “love the sin, hate the sinner” defense to escape liability for firing lesbians, gays, and bisexuals? According to one prominent federal judge, the answer is “yes.”This Essay examines federal judges’ evolving and correct recognition that sexual orientation discrimination claims are colorable under Title VII’s existing framework. The Essay compares the arguments concerning the actionability of sexual orientation claims laid forth in the Second Circuit (Christiansen v. Omnicom), the 7th Circuit (Hively v. Ivy Tech), and the Eleventh Circuit (Evans v. Georgia Regional Hospital).The Essay argues against the position taken by one member …

Newroom: From The Bronx To Haiti: Asb 3-16-2017, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Criminal Law As Family Law, Andrea L. Dennis

Georgia State University Law Review

The criminal justice system has morphed dramatically over the last several decades, achieving more pervasive control over the lives of individuals than ever before. The expansion began with the proliferation of criminal statutes, generating the now well-known concept of over-criminalization. The expansion also encompassed increasing the range of possible sanctions for criminal misbehavior and creating overlapping enforcement regimes. Two more instances of criminal justice expansion include mass surveillance and policies and practices that swept youth out of the juvenile justice system and into the criminal justice system. A product of the expansion has been mass incarceration; more individuals than at …

Keep Out! The Efficacy Of Trespass, Nuisance And Privacy Torts As Applied To Drones, Hillary B. Farber

Georgia State University Law Review

A few years ago one might have seen a small object flying overhead without any idea what it could be. Today, it is fairly commonplace to see drones flying around our neighborhood skies. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) predicts there will be seven million drones populating our skies by 2020. In 2015 hobbyists, recreational users, and commercial businesses purchased unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly referred to as drones, in record-breaking numbers. Estimates reveal that over 4.3 million drones were sold worldwide in 2015. Trade industry experts predicted that more than 2.8 million drones would be sold in the U.S. in 2016 …

Foreclosure Diversion And Mediation In The States, Alan M. White

Georgia State University Law Review

The recent mortgage foreclosure crisis, whose economic effects are well known, transformed state legal structures governing the mortgage foreclosure process. What had been a relatively routine system of default judgments and auction sales has evolved into a negotiation and workout practice in which homeowners contest foreclosures, demand loan modifications and short sales, and propose other alternatives to foreclosures.

A profusion of state laws and court orders were adopted between 2008 and 2014 with the aim of promoting negotiated foreclosure alternatives. These laws have produced a variety of experiments in the “laboratories of democracy.” The defaults—whether home loans are renegotiated, defaults …