民事诉讼法英文论文集团诉讼的法学和经济学介绍.pdfVIP

Eur J Law Econ (2011) 32:185–203 DOI 10.1007/s10657-011-9252-9 An introduction to the law and economics of class action litigation Thomas S. Ulen Published online: 5 May 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 Abstract The consolidation of similar claims for compensation into a single large class of plaintiffs is referred to as ‘‘class action litigation.’’ This practice can have both social costs and social benefits. For an example of the social benefits of consolidating separate claims, if the facts giving rise to the claims are substantially similar, then there may be significant savings in litigation and court administrative costs from presenting those facts once rather a multitude of times. There may, however, be significant social costs to creating a class of litigants and consolidating their claims. For example, this practice may empower those with frivolous negative expected-value claims to wring an unwarranted settlement from the defendant or defendants. The article surveys other sources of social cost and benefit from class- action litigation, reviews the empirical literature on these actions, and examines recent U.S. policy debates about reforming class-action litigation. The article concludes that class-action litigation can have substantial net social benefits but only if courts assiduously oversee the class certification process so as to identify and forestall the social-cost-generating aspects of class-action litigation. Keywords Litigation Class action lawsuit Social costs Positive- and negative-expected value claims JEL Classification K10 K40 K41 K49 T. S. Ulen () University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA e-mail: tulen@ T. S. Ulen University of Illinois College of Law, Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA 123 186