Civil Procedure
Stephen Carr, Class Actions Removability and the Changing Business of the Supreme Court: Dart Cherokee Basin Operating Co. v. Owens
Problems of appellate jurisdiction are, by their nature, mainly pragmatic problems. The U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals are forced to balance the need to provide timely, effective appellate review of district court decisions against the understandable desire for judicial economy.In addition to this inherent tension between fairness and economy, the law is constantly evolving, causing […]
Cole Barnett & Chris Weeg, Intervention in the Tax Court and the Appellate Review of Tax Court Procedural Decisions
The Tax Court is an Article I court. It resolves more than 95% of all tax-related litigation—actually nearly 97% of the total federal tax docket in 2012. Despite this substantial role in federal litigation, scholars and courts have generally put aside the issue of what standard is appropriate when a U.S. federal court of appeals […]
Stephen Carr, Reconsidering Indirect-Purchaser Class Actions
Few issues have proven more vexing to private antitrust enforcement than those related to indirect-purchaser class actions. The current dual system of enforcement—federal and state—exacerbates the difficulty of litigating indirect-purchaser claims by layering procedural complexity on top of substantive complexity and by explicitly allowing (perhaps even incentivizing) duplicative recovery. Almost all commentators are in substantial […]
Cole Barnett, Is Injury a Tortious Act?: Interpreting Florida's Long-Arm Statute
Florida Statute § 48.193 enumerates several acts that grant Florida courts personal jurisdiction over nonresident defendants. Under Florida Statute § 48.193(1)(a)(2), nonresident defendants may become subject to personal jurisdiction in Florida by “committing a tortious act within this state.” The Florida district courts of appeal are split over the correct interpretation of this phrase. Along […]
Judge Emmett Ripley Cox, Thirty-Two Years on the Federal Bench: Some Things I Have Learned
In this Essay, prepared as the basis for the 2014 Dunwody Distinguished Lecture in Law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, Judge Cox discusses a few things he learned from his experience as a trial judge and later as an appellate judge. Specifically, he addresses how the proliferation of federal law—both criminal and civil—imposes […]
Peter L. Markowitz & Lindsay C. Nash, Constitutional Venue
A foundational concept of American jurisprudence is the principle that it is unfair to allow litigants to be haled into far away tribunals when the litigants and the litigation have little or nothing to do with the location of such courts. Historically, both personal jurisdiction and venue each served this purpose in related, but distinct […]