Class action litigation has generated a series of recent Supreme Court decisions imposing greater federal court supervision over the prosecution of collective injury claims. This group of cases raises the question whether class action waivers should be permitted on policy grounds. I examine the...

The common law process appears to have checks and balances that prevent the self-interest of a particular embedded actor (judge or lawyer) from having a substantial distortive effect. The question that follows is whether the Restatement project is also immune, to the same extent as the common...

Because third-party funding and sales of legal rights are equivalent in terms of their economics, I examine arrangements in which third-party sales of legal rights are permitted today – waiver, subrogation, and settlement agreements. The existing arrangements provide valuable lessons for the...

Why are poor inner cities underserved by financial institutions, and why is it so difficult to find a solution to this problem? Explanations of the lending shortfall problem range between theories based on discrimination to the view that the lending market is working flawlessly. Drawing largely...

It is common in the legal academy to describe judicial decision trends leading to new common law rules as resulting from conscious judicial effort. Evolutionary models of litigation, in contrast, treat common law as resulting from pressure applied by litigants. One apparent difficulty in the...