Pamela K Bookman, ‘Default Procedures’, University of Pennsylvania Law Review (forthcoming, 2025). Theories of procedural justice have long contained explicit and implicit assumptions about the status of parties in the American civil justice system. Procedural rules and proposed reforms reflect beliefs that some parties are well-resourced and powerful and other parties are under-resourced and otherwise vulnerable. For several decades, commentators focused primarily on the needs of individual plaintiffs who faced uphill battles of time, money, and procedural barriers in accessing courthouse justice to vindicate their rights. They portrayed defendants as jockeying for procedural advantages of avoidance – everything from jurisdictional defenses to rules of pleading and discovery to broad powers of summary judgment existed to shield defendants from a merits-based confrontation before a jury … (more)
[Robin J Effron, JOTWELL, 4 April]
Leave a Reply