Yearly Archives: 2018
Jun 15, 2018 Jordan Singer
A bellicose politician is on the warpath. His target: the judiciary. On the stump, he mocks individual judges by name and castigates their rulings. The courts, he declares, should not stand in the way of the needs of the public, much less the energetic executive committed to bringing those needs to fruition. Faced with a hostile Congress, a shortage of judges, and no traditional avenue for self-advocacy, the courts are poorly equipped to respond to these attacks on their own. They need a champion on the outside who can make a case against popular passion and for the rule of law.
The story feels conspicuously modern, but it dates back more than a century. The populist demagogue? Theodore Roosevelt. The champion of the judiciary and the rule of law? William Howard Taft.
Jeffrey Rosen’s new biography of Taft, part of the Times Books “American Presidents” series, is a well-timed salve for our unsettling era. As Rosen explains, unlike Roosevelt—and more recent Presidents—Taft embraced “a constitutional rather than a popular conception of the presidency,” and approached his executive responsibilities with a “judicial temperament.” He showed deep-seated respect for the constitutional prerogatives of the coordinate branches, deferring to Congress on legislative priorities and advocating for judicial independence. That reverence for the rule of law fueled Taft’s judicial career before and after his presidency, helping him to modernize the federal courts and bolster their legitimacy. Rosen’s book introduces us to a figure of dual importance: a humble, thoughtful, and constitutionally principled hero in the White House, and a transformative leader on the Supreme Court.
Taft is the only man to serve as both President and Chief Justice, the culmination of a lifetime of public service across two branches of government. The son and grandson of Ohio state judges, Taft was appointed to the Ohio Superior Court in 1887, at the age of twenty-nine. Two years later he became Solicitor General of the United States; three years after that, a judge on the Sixth Circuit. At the insistence of his wife, Nellie, Taft answered the call of politics, serving in rapid succession as Civil Governor of the Philippines, Secretary of War, Provisional Governor of Cuba, and, after the 1908 election, President of the United States.
Nellie reveled in the hurly-burly of political life and the material trappings of political success. Her husband, by contrast, was never fully comfortable in the political arena, where success increasingly depended on one’s willingness to blur constitutional boundaries. Roosevelt had ushered in a new presidential era, energetically introducing reforms without sweating the constitutional details. This greatly distressed Taft, who believed executive power was necessarily tempered by the limits of the Constitution and respect for the rule of law. For his presidency, Taft adopted a much more circumscribed view of his own powers. He approached Congress with “suggestions” on tariff reform, trust-busting, and environmental protection, but refused to interfere with Congress’s power to legislate. And far from bashing judges, he repeatedly stressed the importance of an independent judiciary, including it as a central theme in his inaugural address in 1909 and on the campaign trail in 1912.
Taft’s constitutional humility in the Oval Office proved too much for Roosevelt, who saw it as a virtual abdication of executive power. Their relationship quickly deteriorated, culminating in Roosevelt’s entry into the 1912 presidential election. Unable to draw attention away from Roosevelt’s dramatics and Woodrow Wilson’s message of economic reform, Taft finished a distant third, with only eight electoral votes.
Leaving the White House after electoral defeat might have depressed others, but it came as a relief to Taft. He had always been happier as a judge than as a politician. Moreover, his lifelong ambition—to be Chief Justice—remained within reach. For the next eight years, Taft worked to stay in the public eye (teaching at Yale, leading the ABA) while his allies lobbied successive presidents to place him in the center chair. Their tenacity paid off. In June 1921, Warren Harding nominated Taft to be Chief Justice. The Senate confirmed him the same day.
Taft’s second act as a chief executive was as lively and inspired as his first had been muted. The new Chief Justice encountered a federal court system that was heavily backlogged and under attack. Using his political skill and the prominence of his new office, Taft immediately set about improving the courts’ operations, public legitimacy, and institutional self-awareness. Free from the constitutional restrictions on lobbying that he had faced as President, Taft personally pressed Congress for legislation to modernize the federal court system. He procured more judges, ended the Supreme Court’s mandatory jurisdiction, advocated for judicial power to make procedural rules, secured funding for a freestanding Supreme Court building, and created the predecessor to the Judicial Conference of the United States. A century later, the federal courts still bear the stamp of Taft’s organizational genius.
Reflecting on these developments, Rosen observes that “Taft chafed as a judicial president and thrived as a presidential chief justice.” This is no contradiction, given that Taft was guided by respect for constitutional government and the rule of law in both executive and judicial life. Fealty to the design of the Constitution restricted Taft’s actions as President, and that same fealty energized him as head of the federal court system. And while Rosen portrays Taft’s devotion to these principles as near-religious at times, at no point does Taft’s commitment feel anything less than genuine, heartfelt, and sincere.
We could use a healthy dose of that commitment today. Our last two presidents have chosen to pursue their agendas largely through executive orders, agency regulations, and pointed political attacks, rather than engaging in the hard work of negotiating with Congress. A disquieting number of legislators and interest groups treat judges as politicians in robes and assail judicial nominees for the sin of having privately held opinions. And cynicism about lawmakers, law enforcement, and the law itself is growing. In an age in which the rule of law is increasingly equated with politics, power, and privilege, Taft’s lived experience and fidelity to deliberative democracy and constitutional government remind us that these ideals are worth defending.
The judiciary, too, can learn from Taft’s example. The Chief Justice was keenly aware that courts cannot function without public legitimacy—legitimacy that in our day (if not Taft’s) is rooted in transparency. Today’s federal courts, however, remain curiously uninterested in making their work broadly accessible to the general public. Electronic court documents hide behind the PACER paywall. The Judicial Conference recently shelved a successful pilot program for videotaping civil proceedings. And with rare exceptions, the Supreme Court will not release same-day audio of oral arguments, let alone allow video-recording. It is hard for the public to build confidence in the rule of law when it cannot readily observe the judicial process or the procedural safeguards that public adjudication provides. A modicum of transparency would yield disproportionately positive returns.
Sensing the moment, Rosen writes that “all three branches today are institutionally equipped, if they choose, to resist these populist threats and defend the rule of law.” Taft’s enduring example, and Rosen’s crisp and engaging depiction of it, remind us that the core values of American democracy remain within our civic grasp, if we allow ourselves to embrace them.
Jun 1, 2018 Jasminka Kalajdzic
The modern class action turned fifty last year in the United States, and this year celebrates a quarter-century in Ontario, the first English-speaking province in Canada to enact class action legislation. On these anniversaries, scholars on both sides of the border, and around the world, are taking stock of class actions. A common theme in many of these discussions is whether class actions are achieving their intended purpose. Specifically, do they result in adequate compensation for class members? Or is the temptation for self-interest among plaintiffs’ counsel so great that the interests of class members are inevitably subservient?
Important analyses on these and other critical questions, from doctrinal, comparative, and normative perspectives, are brought together in a special volume of Theoretical Inquiries in Law published in early 2018, entitled Fifty Years of Class Actions – A Global Perspective. Contributions by Elizabeth Chamblee Burch and Brian T. Fitzpatrick tackle the thorny question of compensation from the same starting point—that the entrepreneurial and representative nature of class actions creates risks for under-compensation of class members. They explore different aspects of the problem. Burch focuses on strengthening the role of objecting class members at the settlement approval hearing. Fitzpatrick focuses on using private claims investment to reduce the risk that plaintiffs’ lawyers will settle for too little. Each contributes to an important discussion about the importance of fairly compensating the class.
Professor Burch begins from the premise that principal-agent problems persist in class proceedings, despite the statutorily prescribed function of the judge to protect the interests of the class. Many provisions in class action rules and statutes in the U.S. and other jurisdictions recognize the need to guard against attorney self-interest with court oversight: judicial approval of settlements; opt-out rights; the ability to object to a proposed settlement; and appeals. While the Subcommittee for Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 has recommended a number of proxies by which judges can better determine adequacy of settlement, all fall short because of an information deficit and adversarial void that hamper judges’ ability to maintain robust oversight. Burch focuses on the objection process as the most promising space in which to close the information gap. Identifying the rise of professional objectors (lawyers who routinely challenge settlements, at times simply to extract a nuisance payment from class counsel) as a phenomenon unique to American jurisdictions, she considers “how to encourage noble objectors that benefit class members while staving off those that namely seek rents of class counsel.”
She proposes a ‘leveling up’ of objectors. Sophisticated (and usually represented) objecting class members “can bring to light new information about structural conflicts of interest within the class or between class members and class counsel, as well as information about unfair outcomes.” Burch seeks to incentivize ‘good’ objectors from those who wish to extort money from class counsel. Even well-meaning objectors have no incentive to propose radical changes to a settlement, as fees are only paid if a settlement is approved. ‘Leveling up’ objections would require the public funding of non-profit groups to encourage the socially useful objector. Such funding might come from a self-funding mechanism. (Here, she draws inspiration from Ontario and Quebec; in both provinces, a non-profit organization provides funding for plaintiffs’ disbursements, and in the case of Quebec, legal fees, as well as an indemnity against adverse costs, for successful applicants. In exchange, a percentage of the class’ recovery is levied). If the political will to create a public funding entity is lacking, she suggests an ad hoc approach: judges can direct cy près awards to non-profit objectors. Whatever the source of funding, Burch persuasively argues that properly motivated and publicly funded objectors offer our best hope to ensure judges have the necessary information to monitor attorneys and the settlements they seek to have approved.
Fitzpatrick addresses the problem of suboptimal settlements by focusing on the economics of litigation for class counsel. Because plaintiffs’ attorneys currently bear all the risk for their clients and may be more risk-averse than the defendants, they may decide to settle too early for too little. Fitzpatrick turns to third-party litigation financing as a method to achieve risk-balancing gains: non-lawyer investors purchase some or all of the value of the class’ stake in the litigation in exchange for a percentage of any eventual recoveries. The risk of non-recovery is spread, if not wholly transferred, from class counsel to the funder. The economic theory is that a plaintiff will be less inclined to settle for less than the expected value of the claim, as it has already secured partial payment of the claim from the funder.
Thus far, financiers in the U.S. have avoided funding class actions for, among other reasons, the impossibility of contracting directly with each class member. Indeed, third-party class-action funding has effectively transformed Australia’s opt-out regime into an opt-in regime. The alternative exists in Canada, where judges can approve the payment of a portion of any judgment to the funder, just as they currently enforce a first charge on any recovery for the lawyers’ fee.
Fitzpatrick recognizes four main concerns about whether investing in class actions is socially desirable—fear of more litigation, longer cases, compounding agency costs, and skewing case selection either to only low risk actions or to high risk ones. He is able to succinctly address each concern in turn. An increase in meritorious claims is normatively unproblematic. Longer cases may in fact drive up compensation levels for class members. Agency costs can be addressed by contract (as they have been in Ontario). And, as an empirical matter, financing is unlikely to decrease the number of high probability, low risk cases, even if a marginal number of low probability cases are added. In the end, he concludes that the benefits outweigh perceived costs. In doing so, he contributes to the start of an important conversation both within and outside of the United States on diversifying the financing of entrepreneurial litigation.
The occasion of a milestone anniversary can be an impetus for thoughtful reflection, as well as inspiration for improvement. Burch’s and Fitzpatrick’s articles, as with all of the articles in this volume, make an important contribution to the study of class actions and their possible reform. Both scholars acknowledge the weaknesses of litigation that relies so extensively on economic incentives and risk (in)tolerance. While they aim to address those weaknesses by radically different means, they share a common goal: to secure meaningful justice for absent class members in whose name class actions are brought.
Jasminka Kalajdzic, Questions of Funding and Compensation on the 50th Anniversary of Modern Class Actions, JOTWELL (June 1 2018) (reviewing Elizabeth Chamblee Burch,
Publicly Funded Objectors, 19 Theoretical Inquiries in Law 47 (2018); Brian T. Fitzpatrick,
Can and Should the New Third-Party Litigation Financing Come to Class Actions?,
19 Theoretical Inquiries in Law 109 (2018)),
https://courtslaw.jotwell.com/questions-of-fun…rn-class-actions/.
May 21, 2018 Adam N. Steinman
It has been almost forty years since the Second Circuit’s landmark decision in Filártiga v. Peña-Irala, which opened the door to human rights litigation in U.S. federal courts under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). That statute—a creature of the first Judiciary Act in 1789—authorizes federal subject-matter jurisdiction over “any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.” ATS litigation flourished in the decades following Filártiga, but more recently the Supreme Court has imposed new obstacles. In Sosa, the Court limited the scope of the federal common law cause of action that allows plaintiffs to assert violations of international law under the ATS. In Kiobel, the Court imported a presumption against extraterritoriality into ATS litigation, requiring that such claims “touch and concern the territory of the United States . . . with sufficient force to displace the presumption.” And this Term, in Jesner v. Arab Bank, the Court immunized foreign corporations from liability under the ATS. (WNYC’s More Perfect released a terrific podcast on the ATS following the Jesner oral argument last October.)
If federal law and federal courts are less receptive to actions seeking remedies for human rights violations, what about the states? That is the crucial question that Seth Davis and Chris Whytock tackle in their excellent article. They persuasively argue that state courts and state law can play a role in this context, and that the Supreme Court’s restrictive decisions on questions of federal law do not automatically foreclose more sympathetic approaches at the state level.
A foundation of the authors’ arguments is that state law and state courts have a constitutionally recognized power to redress legal wrongs. The basic notion that where there is a legal right, there is also a legal remedy is the “normative core of a state’s interest in providing redress for the victims of human rights violations.” Davis and Whytock support this view with reference to state law, federal law, and international law, as well as broader political theories of corrective justice, social contract, and cosmopolitanism. Although they recognize that a remedy for human rights violations will not be available in every case, courts considering the proper role of state courts and state law must give due weight to a state’s interest in providing remedies. Their argument “shifts the ground of debate; what presumptively seemed a ‘foreign relations’ matter for the federal government alone now appears a remedial matter presumptively for state courts to decide.”
Davis and Whytock then turn to various court-access doctrines that might restrict state remedies for human rights violations. They argue against removal of state court lawsuits to federal court, criticizing in particular removal on the theory that such lawsuits implicate foreign policy concerns. Likewise, they critique the use of the political question doctrine to dismiss suits seeking redress for human rights violations. Davis and Whytock also address personal jurisdiction. Although they recognize that state courts may lack personal jurisdiction over some foreign defendants, they argue that suits based on human rights violations should not be subject to more rigorous scrutiny than suits based on other wrongs, and that a state’s interest in providing remedies for human rights violations strengthens the case that personal jurisdiction is reasonable. Finally, they discuss forum non conveniens, emphasizing that courts must take seriously the requirement that a dismissal is appropriate only when an adequate foreign forum exists. And even when a foreign system is an adequate alternative, a U.S. state’s interest in providing a remedy for human rights violations is a public-interest factor in favor of allowing a case to proceed in the plaintiff’s selected U.S. forum.
Davis and Whytock next examine substantive choice of law. They argue that under either the Second Restatement or interest analysis, courts must consider the forum state’s interest in redressing wrongs, including wrongs that violate human rights. In addition, the Supreme Court’s presumption against extraterritoriality with respect to federal law—and its application of that presumption in human rights cases—does not apply to state law. And they clarify that even when foreign law is chosen, that choice is not fatal if foreign law would provide a basis for the plaintiff’s claim.
Finally, they confront federal preemption. Considering both field and conflict preemption, they argue that preemption analysis should give substantial weight to the state’s interest in providing law for the redress of wrongs. As to states providing remedies for violations of international law, state courts are not preempted from concurrent jurisdiction over the admittedly narrow federal common law cause of action for enforcing customary international law (CIL) that the Supreme Court recognized in Sosa. Even a state-law right of action enforcing CIL more broadly than Sosa endorsed should not be categorically forbidden. The state’s interest must be taken into account, and “critics of state common law remedies for CIL have the burden of showing that foreign relations concerns leave little to no room for state remedial lawmaking.” They close with a discussion of state remedies for violations of treaty-based human rights. Although they recognize that the case for preemption may be stronger in this context, they reject the view that state courts will necessarily face the same limitations as federal courts.
Ultimately, the proper role of the states in human rights litigation is a question of default rules. There is little doubt that the federal government can take steps to block such litigation at the state level if it so chooses—as Davis and Whytock put it: “[w]here a state oversteps, creating an actual foreign relations conflict, the political branches . . . have no shortage of ways of responding.” So the real issue is what states can do when federal political institutions have not spoken with clarity. Davis and Whytock make a compelling case that the default position should not prohibit state-based remedies for violations of human rights.
May 7, 2018 Brooke D. Coleman
Lesley Wexler, Jennifer Robbennolt & Colleen Murphy,
#MeToo, Time’s Up, and Theories of Justice, available at
SSRN.
Do we really need to hear more about #MeToo or have we reached the point of saturation? Given the subject of my review, it should come as no surprise that I think there is more to say. What might be a surprise, however, is that I also believe we are approaching saturation. Exhibit A is the backlash that is already in full swing. Overexposure could be bad for #MeToo, but I do not think it will be. The culture of harassment, abuse, and diminishment in which women have existed and continue to exist requires nothing short of a counter-saturation. I say bring it on.
This is where this important article by Lesley Wexler, Jennifer Robbennolt, and Colleen Murphy comes in. The authors interrogate what justice might look like for this historic movement. They conclude that the concept of transitional justice (with some nods to principles of restorative justice) holds great promise. While individualized justice is critical, the authors argue that #MeToo should also pursue and achieve systemic change. The authors land on transitional justice, but caution that its promise will be realized only if two things happen. It must include and address the most marginalized women, and it should take a holistic view of what types of changes will lead to societal transformation.
Tarana Burke started the #MeToo movement well before Harvey Weinstein headlines made their way into our collective consciousness. Burke focused her movement on women of color and marginalized people, with a goal of building community among survivors. It was not until a famous, white, cisgender woman—Alyssa Milano—asked Twitter users to share their stories of sexual harassment and assault using the #MeToo hashtag that the current iteration of the movement was born.
This genesis story is telling. While Milano credited Burke with the hashtag and the original movement, the real power differentials among women are apparent—the movement did not garner national attention until a privileged white woman did something. This lack of focus on intersectionality led to the immediate question of whether #MeToo could really change the status quo. Public shaming may have taken down Harvey Weinstein or Bill O’Reilly in the relative short term, and a (second) jury in our criminal justice system may have convicted Bill Cosby of aggravated assault against one of his many accusers. But what about women who lack the power or the opportunity to take on such giants? Moreover, what about the structures and systems that protected these men and so many others from a day of reckoning? The Time’s Up initiative, created by a group of Hollywood elite, has the potential to move beyond this initial step of calling out the behavior and shaming it. The question the authors wrestle with is how.
The authors first review restorative justice theory, which they define as “a loose collection of practices or mechanisms that share a number of core commitments,” focusing on “offender accountability, harm repair, and reintegration.” Apologies can often go wrong and seldom go right, as in cases in which those accused of sexual harassment blame the victims for being overly sensitive or thin-skinned. Although there are many possibilities for harm repair, such as community activities, therapy, public statements of accountability, and cessation of the behavior, the main remedy remains monetary damages. Unfortunately, women cannot seek money publicly or privately—they are criticized for doing so publicly and their voices are often silenced through non-disclosure agreements if they settle privately. There must be reintegration for both the victim and the perpetrator. While apologies and accountability are important first steps for offenders, the quickness with which some have been reintegrated into their communities and careers (think Mel Gibson) leads the authors to emphasize the primacy of full reintegration of victims.
After assessing how restorative justice values might apply to #MeToo, the authors turn their attention to transitional justice. Restorative justice tends to focus on the perpetrator and the victim, which, while critical, does not necessarily lead to systemic change. Transitional justice can link this individualized restorative response with institutional reform.
Transitional justice is defined as “a broad body of multidisciplinary scholarship and practice concentrating on responses to wrongdoing in contexts of transitions toward democracy and away from extended periods of conflict or repression.” The authors argue that the #MeToo movement is analogous to paradigmatic transitional justice in three important ways. Transitional justice focuses not on the isolated criminal acts, but instead on the “patterns of wrongdoing” that have been normalized. The patterns of wrongdoing occur within a broader background of “pervasive structural inequality.” Finally, the goal of transitional justice is explicit—it is to link the response of the individualized wrongs to the goal of broader institutional change.
Analogs to #MeToo are readily apparent. The focus of the movement is the normalized way in which women have been and are treated. That half a million people responded to the #MeToo call within twenty-four hours of Milano’s initial tweet is telling. The way women are treated is systemic, and women have adapted to endure it. Women around the world face obstacles to equality, and while the degree may vary, the fact of inequality between men and women cannot be denied. Finally, while the #MeToo movement has led some men to lose their jobs, with each resignation comes another attempt to minimize or downplay the scope of the issue. Harvey Weinstein is just one of few bad men, for example. Transitional justice forces a collective counter to these forms of denial while also forcing a recognition of the scope of the issue.
The authors acknowledge that the transitional justice with which we are most familiar—truth and reconciliation commissions in war-torn countries—differ from the #MeToo movement in important ways. But the ideas behind transitional justice still hold promise. The authors also do not commit to what form #MeToo transitional justice will take. Instead, they caution that any attempts must endeavor not just to acknowledge, but to actively include marginalized women, and they argue that the movement must take a holistic approach to the variable challenges that have surfaced.
For what it is worth—and as you might have already surmised—I am a proud feminist. As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie expressed in 2014, we all really should be. Treating humans equally is not radical at all; treating humans differently based on gender is what should be horrifying to our society. The #MeToo movement is only beginning to chip away at this paradox, but with work along the lines of what Wexler, Robbennolt, and Murphy are producing, I am hopeful that significant change is possible.
Cite as: Brooke D. Coleman,
#MeToo Justice, JOTWELL
(May 7, 2018) (reviewing Lesley Wexler, Jennifer Robbennolt & Colleen Murphy,
#MeToo, Time’s Up, and Theories of Justice, available at SSRN),
https://courtslaw.jotwell.com/metoo-justice/.
Apr 23, 2018 Lumen N. Mulligan
JOTWELL readers do not need me to tell them that Scott Dodson is a leading voice in jurisdiction and procedure. His most recent article, as we have come to expect, meaningfully contributes to the contemporary discussion concerning the proper, and perhaps competing, roles for the Supreme Court and the Civil Rules Advisory Committee in interpreting the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Dodson calls for the Rules Committee to take a more active amicus curiae role in Civil Rules cases, suggesting that such an approach can substantially improve the reasoning and resolution of such cases without marginalizing the Court’s adjudicatory role.
Dodson succinctly lays out the current state of affairs in which the Court is largely divorced from the Civil Rules promulgation process, despite nominally overseeing it. This state of affairs has led to the current situation in which the Rules Committee takes exclusive ownership over the Rules drafting process, while the Court takes exclusive ownership over interpreting the Rules. As a result, the Court and the Rules Committee engage in their respective tasks without consulting the other.
Dodson aims to bridge this gap in Rules cases before the Court by way of amicus briefing. He suggests that in Civil Rules cases the Administrative Office of the United States Court’s Office of General Counsel should submit amicus briefing on behalf of the Rules Committee. He argues that such amicus briefing brings three broad advantages. First, it can apprise the Court of relevant legislative facts, such as discovery expenses or judicial-management issues, that inform the policy choices embedded in the Civil Rules. Second, it can alert the Court when the Committee itself is considering changes to the Civil Rule under review. And third, it could offer broader perspectives on how particular interpretations presented by the parties might affect other cases or other rules. Finally, Dodson thoughtfully considers numerous objections to his proposal, ranging from the Solicitor General’s amicus role to Rules Enabling Act concerns.
I find much to admire in Dodson’s piece. Indeed, I applaud Dodson’s strategy that replaces the Court’s overreliance on, as Kevin M. Clermont and Stephen C. Yeazell label it, “folk wisdom” in procedural cases with a properly developed set of legislative facts. I also welcome Dodson’s focus upon the Administrative Office’s General Counsel as an unbiased friend of the court, whose incentive structure links only to ensuring that the Court examines the Rules Committee’s past work and record.
As with any important article, Dodson’s paper leaves the reader wanting to explore the issue further. The value of Dodson’s amicus-briefing approach, which aims to highlight the Rules Committee’s past or ongoing work to the Court, is squarely on point in cases when the Court engages in expository, or interpretive, decision-making in an authentic search for the rule drafters’ legislative intent in Civil Rules cases. Thankfully, the Court regularly engages such Civil Rules cases.
As several scholars have noted, however, the Court does not always engage in a legislative-intent analysis in Civil Rules cases. It often deploys prescriptive, or non-interpretive, reasoning in its Civil Rules opinions, in a process that calls for weighing legislative facts, utilizing technical expertise, and making value judgments. One might label these opinions, which rely primarily upon such prescriptive reasoning as opposed to the drafters’ intent, “procedural policy-change cases.”
In procedural policy-change cases, the overwhelming value of a Rules Committee amicus brief seems less apparent. Take Twombly, for example. Commentators near-universally recognize it as a pronouncement regarding the policy underlying pleading requirements in federal court, not as an interpretation of Rule 8(a)(2)’s text. This is to say, the Twombly Court was not confused as to the original drafters’ intent regarding Rule 8(a)(2)—a problem remediable with additional information that a Rules Committee amicus could provide. The Court had issued Conley, which did consider that intent, decades earlier. Rather, the Twombly Court disagreed with the policy choices those drafters enacted. An amicus brief discussing the intent and purpose of Rule 8(a)(2) would not have changed the Court’s reasoning or conclusion.
Dodson and I share a commitment to Civil Rules cases steering the course closest to drafter intent. Dodson’s proposal furthers that goal because the Justices might be less likely to disregard a Rules Committee amicus brief that draws the Court’s attention to drafters’ intent. But in high profile procedural policy-change cases that Dodson discusses—such as Wal-Mart and Twombly—where the Court exercises its muscle to disagree with the Rules Committee’s policy decisions, we should not expect one amicus brief to turn that tide. Dodson’s strategy still brings the added benefit of laying bare the Court’s naked policy power play by offering a true contrast between the drafters’ intent and the Court’s opinion.
An additional area for continued consideration of Dodson’s amicus strategy involves the interdependent nature of the Civil Rules. Many of the pressing issues that the Court faces in procedural policy-change cases are not amenable to successful resolution by way of litigation. Twombly again offers a key example. Many, including Robert Bone, conclude that the Twombly Court was properly concerned with explosive discovery costs in antitrust cases, but that a narrower remedy, such as a Committee proposal for an early motion for summary judgment in complex cases, presented the better solution.
But the Court lacks the power to craft such new rules. It also lacks the power to make coordinated changes to portions of a Rule not under review. For example, only the Rules Committee could create a safe-harbor provision in Rule 11 as part of its revisions to the Rule in the aftermath of the Pavelic & LeFlore opinion, which held that entire law firms could not be sanctioned under Rule 11. These are structural dynamics inherent in the divisions of power between the Court and the Rules Committee. Dodson does not suggest that an amicus brief, from any entity, could overcome this hurdle. Rather, I raise the point to highlight that many of the ills in the Court’s Civil Rules jurisprudence result not from poor information gathering, a problem that Dodson’s strategy readily resolves, but from institutional design, a defect Dodson’s strategy does not address nor did it intend to. Good ideas need not resolve every conceivable difficulty.
The Court often wades into procedural policy-change cases woefully under-informed. Dodson’s amicus briefing proposal would be of immense value in numerous cases. His approach is not a panacea, nor does he advertise it as such. As Bone has noted, the Civil Rules are “interdependent.” Procedural policy-change cases (i.e., the headline-making cases that we care about most) almost always require multiple and simultaneous rule amendments that are “tightly coordinated.” Only the Rules Committee wields this type of drafting power.
I hope you will read Dodson’s article soon. I am confident you will find it as stimulating and thought-provoking as I have.
