Jordan Elias of Girard Sharp has published a book chapter analyzing the U.S. Supreme Court’s class action jurisprudence in the ABA’s 2020 Survey of Federal Class Action Law: A U.S. Supreme Court and Circuit-by-Circuit Analysis.
Complementing other treatises on class actions, the ABA Survey takes a circuit-by-circuit approach to this important and often controversial area of law. ALI Council emeritus member Elizabeth J. Cabraser serves as editor-in-chief of the Survey, which until this year’s edition did not contain a chapter on the Supreme Court.
Mr. Elias’s chapter provides an introduction to class action topics and offers fresh insights that may be of interest to experienced practitioners.
After briefly discussing the history of class actions in Anglo-American law, Mr. Elias presents a series of policy dichotomies that the Supreme Court has sought to balance in its class action decisions: merits vs. case structure; small-claim vindication vs. settlement pressure; attorney vs. client; plaintiff vs. absent class members; and derivative vs. direct.
Mr. Elias then delves more deeply into three of the Court’s leading class action cases: Hansberry v. Lee, 311 U.S. 32 (1940), Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Shutts, 472 U.S. 797 (1985), and Amchem Products, Inc. v. Windsor, 521 U.S. 591 (1997).
The chapter proceeds to analyze the Supreme Court’s class action decisions since the turn of the century, including the Roberts Court’s seminal decision in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 564 U.S. 338 (2011), and its line of arbitration-related cases. The chapter concludes by posing a series of unanswered questions the Court may take up in future class cases.
Learn more and purchase the book here.