Mass Tort Litigation Blog

Fifty Years of Class Actions - A Global Perspective

Theoretical Inquiries in Law has just published a symposium volume on FiftyYears of Class Actions - A Global Perspective. 

It's chock full of interesting ideas and features a keynote from Professor Arthur Miller (NYU).  Here's the table of contents (if the PDF links below don't work, the full volume is available at the link above):

Introduction	PDF
Yael Braudo, TIL Editorial Board

Keynote Address - The American Class Action: From Birth to Maturity	PDF
Arthur R. Miller

Publicly Funded Objectors	PDF
Elizabeth Chamblee Burch

Tiered Certification	PDF
Shay Lavie

Can and Should the New Third-Party Litigation Financing Come to Class Actions?	PDF
Brian T. Fitzpatrick

The Global Class Action and Its Alternatives	PDF
Zachary D. Clopton

Class Actions in the United States and Israel: A Comparative Approach	PDF
Alon Klement, Robert Klonoff

Regulation Through Litigation — Collective Redress in Need of a New Balance Between Individual Rights and Regulatory Objectives in Europe	PDF
Brigitte Haar

Towards Collaborative Governance of European Remedial and Procedural Law?	PDF
Fabrizio Cafaggi

Class Action Value	PDF
Catherine Piché

When Pragmatism Leads to Unintended Consequences: A Critique of Australia’s Unique Closed Class Regime	PDF
Vicki Waye, Vince Morabito

Rethinking the Relationship Between Public Regulation and Private Litigation: Evidence from Securities Class Action in China	PDF
Robin Hui Huang

The Regime Politics Origins of Class Action Regulation	PDF
Agustín Barroilhet

The Class Action Awakens

Hi Everyone! I am sending along a draft of a paper I have been working on for awhile that tries to make sense of the Supreme Court's recent class action decisions. Here is a link to the paper, and here is an abstract:

For the past eight terms the Supreme Court has increased its focus on the law of class actions. In doing so, the Court has revised the law to better accord with a view of the class action as an exception to an idealized picture of litigation. This “exceptional” view of the class action has had a profound impact not only on class action law, but procedural and substantive law in general. However, in the October 2015 term the Court decided three class action cases which support an alternative, “functional” view of the class action, one that does not view the class action as exceptional, but as one of many equally permissible tools to serve the objectives of substantive law. This alternative view has the potential to have a similarly significant impact on the law, but it is not certain whether the Court will further develop this alternative, especially given its most recent class action decisions. This article discusses the development of the “exceptional” view of the class action, the awakening of a “functional” alternative view, and the uncertain path ahead.

I would appreciate any comments you may have!