Private Law Theory

ABSTRACT
From climate change to platform monopolies to systemic discrimination, the defining injuries of modern life are collective in nature. Yet American procedural law increasingly insists on individualized harm, individualized proof, and individualized adjudication. Across doctrines once understood as distinct – standing, class certification, arbitration, pleading, remedies, and preclusion – federal courts are converging around a common procedural vision: one that treats collectivism itself with suspicion. What has emerged is a regime premised on radical individuation, one that isolates grievances and erects ever-higher barriers to collective legal action. This Article argues that these legal trends both reflect and reinforce broader currents of political polarization and democratic retrenchment, posing an urgent challenge to law’s ability to address the defining crises of our time. By tracing the doctrinal turn toward the individual, it asks: Can democracy survive when its citizens can only seek justice one at a time?

Gilles, Myriam, Procedural Individuation (August 20, 2026).