Procedure, Politics, Prediction, and Professors: A Response to Professors Burbank and Purcell
It is a daunting assignment to attempt to add something of merit to the work of Stephen Burbank and Edward Purcell, two of the leading scholars of American civil procedure and procedural reform. Their papers, though, do suggest four themes to me, which I will comment upon briefly: (1) the relationship of substantive and procedural law; (2) the place of politics in procedural reform; (3) the difficulty of reliably predicting consequences of procedural reform; and (4) challenges that the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (CAFA) and similar reforms present for law professors, both in their roles as researchers and writers, and as teachers of would-be lawyers.
Previous ArticleFederal Jurisdiction and Due Process in the Era of the Nationwide Class Action
Tobias Barrington Wolff
Edward A. Purcell, Jr.