The Dilemmas of Civil Litigation

1983 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Jolowicz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Class Action ◽  
The Other ◽  
Class Actions ◽  
American Law ◽  
Time Lead ◽  
Made In

If an English lawyer looks at modern American literature on civil procedure, his first reaction tends to be one of incredulity or incomprehension; the literature deals with subjects of which he has never heard and seeks solutions to questions he has never thought of asking. After some reflection, however, it probably dawns on him that American scholars are writing against a background of assumptions about the process of litigation which he does not share and that those assumptions stem from developments which have occurred in the United States but which have not yet occurred in England or, for that matter, in the other countries of Western Europe. No one in England could write an article such as I received recently from the United States on “Conflict and Dissent in Class Actions” for the simple reason that the class action as it exists in the United States has not yet developed on our side of the Atlantic. Nevertheless, it is now clear that new demands are being made in Europe on the process of litigation, demands which may in time lead to developments such as have already occurred in the United States, and it is these demands which lead to the dilemmas to which my title refers. I want, therefore, to draw attention to two such demands—both very broadly stated—and to the dilemmas they produce, limiting myself mainly to England but with occasional glances elsewhere. This is not a lecture on American law, but it could perhaps be described as one on “pre-American” law.

scholarly journals The Law of Obligations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lobban
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Tort Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Contract Law ◽  
Public Law ◽  
The Other ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
American Law ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Unifying Principles

The Anglo-American law of obligations was profoundly reshaped in the two centuries after 1800, driven by social and economic changes, and changes in legal institutions and doctrines. In contract law, nineteenth-century jurists increasingly sought to put the rules of law into a coherent rational framework (inspired by continental models resting on will theory), though they soon found that this theory could not explain many contractual doctrines. In tort law, jurists were also divided over whether unifying principles underlying tort could be uncovered, with formalist efforts to find such principles being challenged by Realists who argued that tort was in effect ‘public law in disguise’. The quest for underlying principles was also pursued by scholars of unjust enrichment, first in the United States and subsequently in England; though as in the other areas of obligations, by the end of the twentieth century, there was no consensus on whether this was possible.

Reconstructing American Literature: Curricular Issues

1991 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Lauter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Black People ◽  
White Male ◽  
Emily Dickinson ◽  
The United States ◽  
Literary Imagination ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Cultures ◽  
John Crowe Ransom

Next to where I type, I have tacked up the syllabi for two American literature courses taught in the 1980s at well-known, indeed prestigious, institutions in the United States—one in California, the other in Ohio. Both are survey courses, one called “The American Literary Imagination,” the other “Life and Thought in American Literature.” One covers, in a single semester, thirty-two writers, including Philip Freneau, William Cullen Bryant, Washington Irving, John Greenleaf Whittier, John Crowe Ransom, and Ezra Pound; all are white and male, except for one assignment on Emily Dickinson and one poem by Marianne Moore. The other, a two-term course, includes twenty-three white male writers and Emily Dickinson. I do not want to argue that today such courses have no right to exist, for that kind of statement would engage the significant issue of academic freedom. But such courses are simply not truthful, nor professionally current. The pictures they present to students of the American literary imagination or of American life and thought are woefully incomplete and inaccurate. In the profession of literary study they represent what, in Psychology, was represented by generalizations about moral development based on interviews with a sample of white, male, college sophomores and juniors; or in History, was represented by conclusions about the “expansion” of opportunity under Jacksonian democracy when, in fact, white women's opportunities and those of black people were largely contracting. Were such courses titled “American Literature from the Perspective of ‘'Diner’” (a film set in 1958), they might have accurately represented themselves. But now, over a quarter of a century later, a large new body of scholarship has transformed the intellectual base of our profession. To be responsive to this scholarship and to present an accurate picture of the development of the literary cultures of the United States, teaching has begun to change. A number of recent volumes record such change and offer means for encouraging its systematic development. The changes in our profession I am describing are rooted in the movements for racial justice and sex equity.

7. International Political Economy: Contemporary Debates

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Jackson ◽  
Georg Sørensen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Current Model ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines three important debates in International Political Economy (IPE). The first debate concerns power and the relationship between politics and economics, and more specifically whether politics is in charge of economics or whether it is the other way around. The second debate deals with development and underdevelopment in developing countries. The third debate is about the nature and extent of economic globalization, and currently takes places in a context of increasing inequality between and inside countries. This debate is also informed by the serious financial crisis of 2008 and has raised questions regarding the viability of the current model of capitalism in the United States and Western Europe.

Class Actions in the United States and Israel: A Comparative Approach

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alon Klement ◽  
Robert Klonoff
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
The United States ◽  
Class Action ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Common Features ◽  
Class Actions ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
The Many ◽  
Action Procedure

Abstract Unlike most countries, the United States and Israel have employed the class action procedure for decades. This Article compares the two countries’ class action regimes and examines how the device has evolved in those countries. It examines the current procedures, as well as proposed reforms. It also compares class action statistics in the two countries relating to filings and outcomes. We demonstrate the many common features between the United States and Israeli class action procedures. As we illustrate, these common features have led to robust class action practices in both countries. At the same time, there are profound differences between the types of class actions filed and their outcomes. Thus, while Israel has many more class actions than the United States on a per capita basis, the cases are much less consequential from a monetary and subject matter perspective. We explore possible explanations for these observations. Furthermore, this study identifies features — utilized by the United States and Israel — that can serve as models for other countries that are adopting or amending their own class action regimes.

The Beard, Masculinity, and Otherness in the Contemporary American Novel

2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER FERRY
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Hegemonic Masculinity ◽  
Don Delillo ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
John Updike ◽  
American Novel ◽  
Key Issues

This article identifies the humble beard as a device used in twenty-first-century American literature to examine the contemporary condition of American masculinity. Drawing on readings from key writers of post-9/11 fiction, such as John Updike, Moshin Hamid, and Don DeLillo, the article calls for the need to move on from the reductive rendering of the beard as an irrefutable representation of Otherness to see the beard as a device used to explore the construction of masculinities in relation to key issues such as racialization, sexuality and the queering of the Other, and nationhood in the globalized and globalizing arena of the United States. Reading Amy Waldman's nuanced engagement with the beard in The Submission (2011) alongside key works on hegemonic masculinity, whiteness, and globalized masculinities, the article underlines the power of the beard in the contradictions and complexities of a changing American masculinity now performed beyond the physical borders of “the nation” on the global stage.

Chapter I. The Economy in 1979

1980 ◽  
Vol 91 ◽  
pp. 8-26
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
The United States ◽  
Oecd Countries ◽  
West Germany ◽  
The Other ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Made In

The United Kingdom economy remained almost stagnant in 1979 with GDP being only 0.6 per cent higher than in 1978. Not only is this a dismal end to a generally depressed period of seven years but the outlook for the beginning of the 1980s is even worse, as we discuss in chapter II on the home economy. In comparison with the United States, Japan, West Germany, France and the OECD countries as a whole the UK performance has been slow, as is clear from chart I. However if similar comparisons with the other countries had been made in 1969 or 1959 the UK performance would also have been seen to be relatively slow. This picture of a stagnant aggregate economy in 1979 covers up an underlying picture of considerable fluctuation in the components of the economy.

scholarly journals Standing to Sue and Multiple Defendant Class Actions in Australia, Canada, and the United States

1969 ◽  
pp. 295
Author(s):  
Vince Morabito
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Class Action ◽  
Appellate Courts ◽  
Class Actions ◽  
Action Procedure

Recent decisions by appellate courts in Australia, Canada, and the United States provide an ideal opportunity to explore an important issue concerning the class action procedure, which has been largely ignored by legal commentators in Australia and Canada and has received, in the author's opinion, inadequate attention in the United States. The issue in question concerns the availability of the class action device where the representative plaintiff is seeking to initiate a class proceeding against more than one defendant but does not have individual standing to sue all of the proposed defendants.

scholarly journals The Antibiotics Class Actions

1976 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 251-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles W. Wolfram
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Insurance Companies ◽  
Manufacturing Companies ◽  
Remarkable Feature ◽  
The Public ◽  
Class Actions ◽  
Drug Companies ◽  
Drug Manufacturing

Anyone interested in the current doings of the antibiotics antitrust litigation in the spring of 1975l could easily have found seating in the public section of the courtroom of Judge Miles A. Lord in Minneapolis. An instantly striking aspect of the courtroom was that, in contrast to the scattering of young attorneys and an occasional curious onlooker in the public section, there were dozens of people crowded into the area around the central raised bench on which Judge Lord sits. Several attorneys represenr: the defendants-five of the major drug manufacturing companies in the United States. Numerous counsel for the plaintiffs were grouped around a large table to Judge Lord's right. Clerks, court reporters, and marshals sat beneath the bench. The most remarkable feature of the crowd, however, was the presence of two jury boxes containing two separate juries. In fact, two different trials in six different cases were proceeding at once. “Jury One” was hearing evidence in actions brought by the United States, two national classes (one of insurance companies and the other of union health and welfare funds), and a California medical group. “Jury TWQ” was hearing evidence in suits brought in behalf of competitors of the defendant drug companies. For the most part, the juries were hearing evidence common to both sets of cases. When evidence was introduced that was relevant to only one set of cases, the other jvry would be excused.

Chapter II. The World Economy

1969 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 24-39
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Industrial Countries ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
National Output ◽  
Substantial Rise

There was another substantial rise in output in industrial countries between the second and third quarters. But during the third quarter the deceleration of economic growth in the United States became more marked and showed signs of spreading to Canada and Western Europe. Developments have been broadly consistent with our August forecast and we still expect the aggregate national output of the industrial countries to be higher by about 4½ per cent in 1969 than it was in 1968 and to rise by another 3-4 per cent in 1970. It now looks as though we were rather too optimistic about prospects in the United States, where the increase is unlikely to exceed 3 per cent this year and may not reach 2 per cent in 1970. On the other hand growth in Western Europe is still tending to surpass expectations. Despite the Italian strikes it will probably be over 5½ per cent this year; and it may exceed 4½ per cent in 1970.

Can and Should the New Third-Party Litigation Financing Come to Class Actions?

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-123
Author(s):  
Brian T. Fitzpatrick
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Risk Tolerance ◽  
Class Action ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Class Actions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Carry Over ◽  
Substantive Law ◽  
Transfer Device

Abstract In the United States, there has been tremendous growth in a form of third-party litigation financing where investors buy pieces of lawsuits from plaintiffs. Many scholars believe that this new financing helps to balance the risk tolerance of plaintiffs and defendants and thereby facilitates the resolution of litigation in a way that more closely tracks the goals of the substantive law. In this Article, I ask whether these risk-balancing virtues of claim investing carry over into class action cases. This is a question that has not yet been addressed by scholars because many think it is not possible for financiers to buy pieces of class action lawsuits in the United States. But I show that such investments are neither impractical nor unethical; indeed, it appears that they are already here. It is therefore worth considering whether the investments confer the same social benefits they do in other cases. I argue that although class members do not need a risk transfer device in class action cases because they are almost always risk-neutral in light of their small losses, their lawyers do need such a device. Although this does not necessarily mean that claim investing is socially desirable overall in class actions, the social costs that have thus far been identified with claim investing seem modest compared to the benefits.

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