U.S. Class Actions and the "Global Class"

Authors

George A. Bermann, Columbia Law SchoolFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2009

Abstract

Robert Casad's articles on comparative civil procedure were among the first comparative law pieces that caught my eye when, as a freshly-minted associate at a leading New York law firm, I found myself leafing through comparative law journals, rather than amassing billable hours. I had no idea then that comparative law could be as fascinating as I have come to find it, certainly not in a field like civil procedure where the dividends of comparative law work were by no means obvious to me. (Comparative law was not even taught in any guise at Yale Law School in the late 1960's and early 70's, and international law as taught there frankly resonated poorly with matters of civil procedure.)

Doing comparative law work back then struck me as a real luxury, and I suspect Robert Casad may have felt much the same way. But I also suspect that he had an intuition that something else was afoot-namely that civil procedure could, unexpectedly (as compared to a field like commercial law, for example) become terrain on which legal systems and law might not merely be compared (for whatever purely intellectual payoff the comparative law exercise might produce), but also powerfully interact in ways meaningful to the operation of legal systems in an interconnected world.

Disciplines

Civil Law | Civil Procedure | Common Law | Comparative and Foreign Law | Jurisprudence | Law

Recommended Citation

George A. Bermann, U.S. Class Actions and the "Global Class", 19 Kan. J. L. & Pub. Pol'y 91 (2009).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/2881