This is the Introduction to the published Symposium on "What We Know and Do Not Know About the Impact of Legal Services on the American Economy and Policy," held at the University of Texas School of Law in February 2002. It notes that many of the articles in the Symposium cast doubt on claims...

This article argues that nuisance law transformed in significant and largely unnoticed ways during the mid-to-late twentieth century. This transformation of nuisance law generates uncompensated takings by depriving plaintiffs of access to compensatory damages for nuisance claims for the sole...

Closure has value in mass litigation. Defendants often insist on it as a condition of settlement, and plaintiffs who can deliver it may be able to command a premium. But in multidistrict litigation (MDL), which currently makes up over one-third of the federal docket, closure depends on...

This Article provides a financial economic analysis of punitive damages. The core problem, as the Supreme Court acknowledged in Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, is not the systemic amount of punitive damages in the tort system; rather, it is the risk of outlier outcomes. Low frequency, high severity...

In this memorandum prepared for the Annual ABA National Institute on Class Actions, Professors Coffee and Lahav review and assess developments in class certification over recent years, and track trends in approaches to certification. Special attention is given to securities litigation, the use...

Laws governing relations between spouses have undergone profound changes that continue to revolutionize the standards and procedures for dissolutions of marriage. The most dramatic changes in divorce law have come from the advent of no-fault divorce, the decline in spousal maintenance awards,...

Courts assessing compensatory damages awards often lack adequate information to determine the value of a victim's loss. A central reason for this problem, which the literature has thus far overlooked, is that courts face a dilemma when applying their standard information-forcing tool to the...

A negotiator's Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement ("BATNA") is a key source of negotiating power. The BATNA concept was originally developed in the United States and has been exported to other countries through negotiation books and courses. But can negotiators legally rely on BATNA...