LAW 748

Comparative Class Actions

Law School

Recommended for route(s):

[ Academia ] Business Law: Finance: Capital Markets, Financial Reporting, Corporate Governance

General course Description:

Although many lawyers regard the class action as a quintessential U.S. procedure, more than two dozen countries in North and South America, Northern, Central and Western Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa and the Mid-East have adopted some form of modern representative class action, and the number of jurisdictions with class actions is continuing to increase. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has steadily narrowed the scope for U.S. class actions, other jurisdictions see the procedure as appropriate for resolving securities, antitrust, consumer and personal injury claims. Some jurisdictions have invited business to resolve trans-national claims against them in their own domestic courts, and plaintiff attorneys who cannot obtain class certification in U.S. courts coordinate non-class mass actions with class action attorneys outside the U.S. Stanford is collaborating with the University of Windsor (Ontario) and Tilburg University (the Netherlands) law schools to offer a 1-credit seminar on these developments. Using a combination of synchronous and a-synchronous on-line communication, faculty and students at the 3 law schools will describe and analyze differences and similarities among the 3 countries (quite different) class action regimes. The class will meet weekly (sometimes separately by school and sometimes with faculty and students from the 3 schools together virtually) and SLS students will work with students at the other 2 institutions to research issues that cut across all three jurisdictions. This is a great opportunity to discover how lawyers in non-U.S. jurisdictions think about problems that arise trans-nationally, and some of the student you encounter in the seminar may be the practitioners you will litigate besides or against in future global litigation. Elements used in grading: Class Participation, Attendance, Written Assignments. CONSENT APPLICATION: Students interested this course should contact Professor Hensler directly via email at dhensler@stanford.edu.

Course Style:

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