There is extensive literature on whether courts or legislators produce efficient rules, but which of them produces rules efficiently? The law is subject to uncertainty ex ante; uncertainty makes the outcomes of trials difficult to predict and deters parties from settling disputes out of court. In...

Should the party who loses in litigation be forced to pay the legal fees of the winner? This paper surveys the economic literature regarding the effects of legal fee shifting on a variety of decisions arising before and during the litigation process. Section 2 provides a brief survey of the...

In this paper we consider the effects of legal-expenses insurance on settlement. Using a one-shot asymmetric information model of litigation, we scrutinize the litigants' interactions under the situations that the plaintiff is before-the-event insured, after-the-event insured or self-funded. We...

This paper examines the law and economics of third-party financed litigation. I explore the conditions under which a system of third-party financiers and litigators can enhance social welfare, and the conditions under which it is likely to reduce social welfare. Among the applications I consider...

This article argues that the enforcement in England in Re New Cap Reinsurance Corporation of an Australian monetary judgment rendered under Australian insolvency law does not sit easily with the Foreign Judgments (Reciprocal Enforcement) Act 1933. This is because the Foreign Judgments...

This essay on the class action will be a chapter in the Procedural Law and Economics volume forthcoming from Edward Elgar. It reviews the law-and-economics literature on the class action, current as of 2008 (when I wrote the chapter). It discusses the benefits of large claim and small claim...

This Article addresses the normative issues raised by the use of statistical sampling to adjudicate large case aggregations. In its recent decision, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, the Supreme Court referred to sampling pejoratively as “Trial by Formula.” This Article argues that the...

This paper empirically compares civil procedure in common law and civil law countries. Using World-Bank and hand-collected data, and unlike earlier studies that used predecessor data sets, this paper finds no systematic differences between common and civil law countries in the complexity,...

This Article uses public choice theory and the new institutionalism to discuss the incentives, proclivities, and shared backgrounds of lawyers and judges. In America every law-making judge has a single unifying characteristic, each is a former lawyer. This shared background has powerful and...

The hallmark of Judge Posner's class action decisions is rigorous review to ensure that aggregate litigation serves the best interests of class members and does not unduly pressure defendants to settle. Although he championed class actions, especially as a way to provide efficient justice in...