Private Law Theory

ABSTRACT
Dispute resolution has become increasingly shrouded in secrecy, with the proliferation of protective orders in discovery, confidential settlement agreements, and private arbitration. While many civil procedure scholars have criticized this trend for undermining the systemic benefits of public adjudication, the desirability of secrecy in civil litigation proves to be a much more complicated question. On the one hand, some of those same scholars have recently sought to justify civil litigation in terms that, ironically, highlight the benefits of secrecy …

Shapiro, Matthew A, The Indignities of Civil Litigation (April 2019). Boston University Law Review, forthcoming.

First posted 2019-04-11 07:11:03