Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

Cassone, Alberto; Ramello, Giovanni B. --- "Private, Club and Public Goods: The Economic Boundaries of Class Action Litigation" [2012] ELECD 306; in Backhaus, G. Jürgen; Cassone, Alberto; Ramello, B. Giovanni (eds), "The Law and Economics of Class Actions in Europe" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: The Law and Economics of Class Actions in Europe

Editor(s): Backhaus, G. Jürgen; Cassone, Alberto; Ramello, B. Giovanni

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847208033

Section: Chapter 7

Section Title: Private, Club and Public Goods: The Economic Boundaries of Class Action Litigation

Author(s): Cassone, Alberto; Ramello, Giovanni B.

Number of pages: 26

Extract:

7. Private, club and public goods: the
economic boundaries of class action
litigation
Alberto Cassone and Giovanni B. Ramello*


1. INTRODUCTION
In recent decades, class action litigation has attracted growing attention
from citizens and legislators around the world, by virtue of its ability to
extend the protection of victims where traditional methods ­ i.e. individual
civil action and regulation ­ have proven vulnerable.
First introduced in the US legal system in 1938, through Rule 23 of the
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, it then took nearly three decades for class
action to be fully implemented into US civil procedure, with the 1966
issuing of the new version of Rule 23 by the Supreme Court.1 Since then,
class action has been fiercely criticised by a number of opponents, to the
point of starting, in the 1970s, what has been described as a `holy war'
(Hensler et al., 2000).2 However, despite these negative stances, it has over
the years become `one of the most ubiquitous topics in modern civil law' in
the US, and nowadays one of `[t]he reason for the omnipresence of class
actions lies in [its] versatility' (Epstein, 2003, p. 475) which, according to a
great many commentators, can make it an effective means for serving
justice and efficiency in a broad sense.



* This material substantially refers to Cassone and Ramello (2011).
1
Some authors have detected a precursor to class action in the Medieval group
litigation of England. (Yeazell, 1987). Though not questioning the legacy owed by
...