Mass Tort Litigation Blog

IAPL Moscow Conference Papers

The presentatons from the 2012 Moscow meeting of the International Association of Procedural Law have been posted to SSRN as a combined UC Irvine Law research paper entitled, Civil Procedure in Cross-Cultural Dialogue: Eurasia Context.  Among the many professors whose papers are gathered are Carrie Menkel-Meadow (UC Irvine), Richard Marcus (UC Hastings), Stefaan Voet (Univ. of Ghent), and Jasminka Kalajdzic (Univ. of WIndsor).  Here's the abstract:

The Idea of the book is to discuss the evolution of civil procedure in different societies, not only in the well-known civil or common law systems, but also in different countries of Eurasia, Asia, etc. Civil procedure in Europe and North America is a subject of enormous scientific and practical importance. We know a lot about these systems. But we do not know enough about civil procedure in the rest of the world. How does it work and what are the main principles? Culture is one of the main factors that makes civil procedure of these countries different. Therefore it is necessary to discuss the main links between different systems of civil procedure. The discussion was held on the basis of National reports from 24 countries.

BGS

Khoury, Menard & Redko on the Role of Canadian Private Law in the Control of Risks Associated with Tobacco Smoking

Professors Lara Khoury and Marie-Eve Couture-Ménard (McGill), and Olga Redko (LL.B./B.C.L. Candidate, McGill) have posted to SSRN their article, The Role of Private Law in the Control of Risks Associated with Tobacco Smoking: The Canadian Experience, 39 Am. J. L., Med. & Ethics 442 (2013).  Here's the abstract:

Can private law litigation serve as a tool for advancing public health objectives? With this contentious and oft-asked question in mind, this text tackles Canada’s recent tobacco litigation. This Article first presents critical commentary regarding various lawsuits waged against Canadian cigarette manufacturers by citizens acting as individuals or as parties to class action lawsuits. We then turn to analyze how Canada’s provincial governments rely on targeted legislation to facilitate private law recourses for recouping the healthcare costs of treating tobacco-related diseases. The authors address challenges to the constitutionality of this type of legislation, as well as attempts by manufacturers to transfer responsibility to the federal government.

BGS

Paul McMahon on Proceduralism, Civil Justice, and American Legal Thought

Professor Paul McMahon (Harvard) has posted to SSRN his article, Proceduralism, Civil Justice, and American Legal Thought, 34 U. Pa. J. Int'l L. (forthcoming).  Here's the abstract:

American legal scholars spend a large proportion of their time debating and theorizing procedure. This Article focuses on American proceduralism in the particular field of civil justice and undertakes a detailed comparison with England, where procedural questions receive little academic attention. It finds that procedure is more prominent in America partly because Americans have been more willing than others to use private litigation as a tool for regulation. More significantly, procedural questions necessarily occupy more space in American debates because authority over civil justice is unusually dispersed among different actors; procedural rules allocate power among these actors. But American proceduralism runs deeper than these surface explanations allow, and a full account requires an examination of the history of American legal thought. I trace contemporary American proceduralism to a counter-intuitive source: the emergence of Legal Realism in the 1920s and 1930s.

BGS

Justice Kagan Interview

You can find an interview with Justice Kagan here.  

 

At around 20:52 you can see her speaking about Italian Colors and then whether this is a pro-business Supreme Court.

Note the caveat then the description and what looks like a "yes".  She says:

"None of us decide cases based on who the parties are.  Its not like the Chamber of Commerce appears in court and you say I like the Chamber of Commerce...or a consumer appears in court and you say I like consumers or they need more protection or they don't.  I mean, I think people look at the individual cases before them.  But I do think in a number of cases with respect to a number of areas of law there is a majority of the court that has a set of legal views that, you know, provide some significant relief from both federal and state regulation to businesses.  So if you look at just even the last couple of weeks of the term there were a couple of cases in which the Court very restrictively read anti-discrimination laws, made it harder to bring anti-discrimination suits.  There was another case where the Court made it harder for local governments to put conditions on development permits or to do environmental mitigation of some kinds.  There was another case where people made it -- where the Court made  it -- much harder for injured plaintiffs who have had terrible reactions to various kinds of pharmaceutical drugs to sue for injury.  So I think there were a number of cases where the Court made it more difficult for injured persons to come to court and to use federal and state law to hold business to account for injuries that they've done."

At 31.09 Toobin asks her about public opinion's effect on the Court - do they read polls?  Her answer, not really any more enlightening than you'd think it would be:

"I don't think we read polls like that and I don't think polls influence what we do, but you know, on the other hand, we live in a world and I think...all of us are products of that world and understand things that are going on with it.  And I think it would just not be right to say that the trends in what people think and societal attitudes don't affect what the Court does."

ADL