For the last six or seven years, a growing academic literature has put forward the argument that the primary justification for class actions is not to compensate absent class members, but to deter corporate wrongdoing. That justification has formed the basis of a number of arguments, from Professor Fitzpatrick’s proposal that class action attorneys earn

Today, the United States Supreme Court hears oral argument in Concepcion v. AT&T, a case on appeal from the Ninth Circuit concerning whether the Federal Arbitration Act preempts states like California from requiring arbitration clauses to allow for classwide arbitration. (The venerable SCOTUSBlog has an excellent roundup of the issues and briefing.)

I’m not

Vanderbilt law professor Brian Fitzpatrick’s year-old paper The End of Objector Blackmail has received a fair amount of attention from various lawyer-bloggers and lawyer-tweeters in the last week.  The chatter stems from the attention he draws to a practice known as quick-pay provisions – provisions to pay plaintiffs’ counsel immediately when settling a