Debates Over Group Litigation in Comparative Prespective
What Can We Learn from Each Other?
--will bring together leading scholars, practitioners, judges, and officials to consider various responses to problems of widespread injury from a common source, such as defective products, environmental pollution, human-rights violations, or financial fraud. Legal systems vary greatly in their approaches to such problems, with America placing considerable--some say excessive--emphasis on the private class action. Many other nations allow class actions little or not at all, relying instead on such approaches as government regulation, social safety nets, or actions by private groups such as associations or unions.
--will ask what different nations can learn from each other, as to what works and what does not in different systems and substantive contexts. The conference is meant neither to promote nor to condemn the class action but rather to consider it along with other approaches, and persons with a diverse range of perspectives are being invited and are welcome to attend.
--will foster dialogue through panel discussions and breakout sessions, giving opportunities for those attending to participate as well as listen.
--will provide perspectives that have often been available only to specialized students of comparative legal institutions, and enable participants to consider the utility of a range of approaches for their own systems. Principal papers and comments from the conference will be published in the spring, 2001 issue of the Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law.
Topics will include:
- realities and myths of the American class action
- approaches to widespread-injury problems in selected common-law and civil-law systems
- reasons for avoidance of class actions in many civil-law systems, and alternative approaches
Timing and location:
--the conference dates and place, Friday-Saturday 21-22 July 2000 in Geneva, Switzerland, make it easy for those who will be at the American Bar Association convention in London, which ends on Thursday 20 July, to attend the conference.