During the 1950s and 1960, landmark rulings ordering school desegregation and other structural changes transformed civil litigation in the United States. The most striking feature of the new model of litigation, Abram Chayes argued, was the metamorphosis of the judge into a "creator and manager...

Initiated by interest groups representing the interest of a class of agency clients, structural reform litigation shapes the administration of important policy domains, particularly in the social services. Employing a spatial bargaining model we show that, instead of holding the agency to its...