In the aftermath of George Zimmerman’s state court acquittal in the Trayvon Martin killing, the U.S. Department of Justice is considering whether to bring federal criminal charges against Zimmerman arising out of the same incident. While such a dual or successive prosecution does not violate double jeopardy, the determination whether the federal government should bring charges turns on whether...
UCLA Law Review Scholar Forum: “Detention Without End?”
The UCLA Law Review’s Fall Scholar Forum for the 2013-14 academic year featuring Professor Jonathan Hafetz will be held on Thursday, October 24, at 12:15 p.m., in Room 1447. Professor Norman Abrams (UCLA School of Law) will give a formal response. Lunch will be served. Professor Hafetz, whose article “Detention Without End? Reexamining the Indefinite Confinement of Terrorism Suspects Through the...
The View From Below: Public Interest Lawyering, Social Change, and Adjudication
In Public Interest Lawyering: A Contemporary Perspective, Professors Alan Chen and Scott Cummings provide a nuanced and thorough account of the relationship between lawyering and social change. In this Review Essay, Professor Douglas NeJaime explores how key insights from Chen and Cummings’ textbook could impact the way students approach adjudication, which remains the primary subject of...
Procedure, Substance, and Power: Collective Litigation and Arbitration Under the Labor Law
In this contribution to the Symposium honoring Stephen Yeazell, the author explores the interaction between group litigation and social context in the contemporary setting. She traces the recent law of class action waivers coupled with mandatory individual arbitration clauses in consumer and employment contracts. She shows how the Supreme Court’s decisions in AT&T v. Concepcion and American...
Procedure and Society: An Essay for Steve Yeazell
Stephen Yeazell’s pathbreaking study of the history of group litigation revealed how disparate societies have shaped the rules of group litigation to meet their own needs. Professor Yeazell thereby demonstrated that procedural rules are socially contingent rather than universal in nature. In this Essay honoring Steve, I transform that lesson into a new approach to joinder rules. Specifically, I...
Of Groups, Class Actions, and Social Change: Reflections on From Medieval Group Litigation to the Modern Class Action
In this brief commentary celebrating Professor Yeazell’s scholarship, I reflect on his seminal book on the medieval roots of group litigation in the light of global developments and technological change.
What Evidence Scholars Can Learn From the Work of Stephen Yeazell: History, Rulemaking, and the Lawyer’s Fundamental Conflict
This short Essay draws three lessons for evidence scholars from Stephen Yeazell’s justly celebrated work in civil procedure. The first lesson is to take history seriously but to be realistic about what it can tell us: to use history to gain perspective, not to recover lost wisdom. The second lesson is to take rulemaking seriously: to think about the processes through which evidence rules are...
Re-Re-Financing Civil Litigation: How Lawyer Lending Might Remake the American Litigation Landscape, Again
Stephen Yeazell has long recognized that changes to case capitalization affect the nature and intensity of civil litigation. So too, writing back in 2001, Yeazell identified the next wave of capital with the capacity to alter the American litigation landscape: third-party litigation finance. In the ensuing decade, that industry, and specifically what I call the “lawyer lending” industry—comprised...