Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2001

Abstract

The opportunity to offer advice to those who are considering the adoption or modification of class or group action procedures for other legal systems is both welcome and distracting. It is welcome because it forces a change of perspective in the attempt to contemplate adaptation of United States practice to different cultures, political structures, substantive laws, and courts with dissimilar surrounding procedures. It is distracting because there are so many different levels of possible comparison that the choice of perspective must be tailored to the immediate occasion. It is tempting to take on the most important sets of questions-for example, to ask if non-governmental individuals, organizations, or lawyers should replace individual litigants in larger scale litigation so as to facilitate efficiency or remedy wrongs that otherwise would go unredressed. These questions can be addressed only within the framework of a particular society and its political and governmental structures. There is little point in attempting to provide answers good for all settings. At the other end, however, there is no point in attempting to address matters of minute detail. A more suitable middle ground can be found in a series of questions raised by more than eight years of witnessing the work of the Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as it has grappled with possible revisions of Civil Rule 23. These questions are more helpful than even provisional answers would be-the questions are much the same for most systems, while the answers often will be different.

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