Online Volumes

† Associate Professor of Business Law & Ethics, Jerome Bess Faculty Fellow, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. Ishani Sachdeva provided excellent research assistance.

†† Professor of Law, Wake Forest School of Law. For helpful comments and conversations, I am grateful to Ronit Berkovich, Judge Shelley Chapman (ret.), Judge Robert Drain (ret.), Eric Green, Laura Davis Jones, Jessica Lauria, and Judge James Peck. Davis Hayter, Mark Lee, and Austin Magleby provided excellent research assistance. As always, I thank my family for their unwavering support.

In bankruptcy, establishing a mass-tort trust is the final piece in structuring resolution of protracted aggregate litigation faced by a corporate debtor. As seen in cases like Purdue Pharma and Boy Scouts of America, the multibillion-dollar aggregate settlement figure captures all the headlines. But the trust distribution provisions—which actually provide the details of how individual…

Phase II: Managing the Remedial Phase in Aggregate Litigation

Alexandra D. Lahav

Anthony W. and Lulu C. Wang Professor, Cornell Law School. Conflicts of interest disclosure: The author has been a paid expert on how to approach Phase II in litigation. Many thanks to the editors of the Cornell Law Review and to Tom Baker, David Hoffman, Brian Fitzpatrick, Joe Sellers and participants in the University of Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt University law school workshops for excellent comments that helped improve this Article.

This Article proposes nine methods for dealing with the damages phase in a mass tort or mass accident situation after an issue class action on liability has been certified and plaintiff has prevailed on liability in Phase I or once a case has been filed in a bankruptcy court and needs to be valued. Courts,…

The Alchemist’s Inversion

Samir D. Parikh

Professor of Law, Wake Forest University School of Law. For helpful comments and conversations, I am grateful to John Abegg, Suneal Bedi, John Beisner, Andrew Bradt, Elizabeth Cabraser, Sergio Campos, Zachary Clopton, Alex Dahl, Hon. Robert Drain, Nora Freeman Engstrom, Page Faulk, Peter Gardner, Maria Glover, Jason Joy, Alexi Lahav, Jessica Lauria, Matt Linder, Jim Murdica, Edward Neiger, Leigh O’Dell, Billy Organek, Robert Rasmussen, Teddy Rave, Chris Seeger, Emily Siegel, Brennan Torregrossa, Chaz Vandemotter, Anupama Yerramalli, and participants at the Duke-UNC-UVA-Wake Forest Business Law Colloquium and the Law & Economics Center’s Third Party Litigation Research Roundtable. I thank my family for their unwavering support.

Litigation finance makes the world go round. The capital financiers provide is the lifeblood for plaintiffs’ firms and individual claimants attempting to run the litigation gauntlet in high-stakes battles with wealthy corporate entities. Third-party litigation funding in general litigation is well documented and frequently discussed. But the role financiers play and the dynamics they create…

Zombie Litigation: Claim Aggregation, Litigant Autonomy, and Funders’ Intermeddling

Maya Steinitz

Professor of Law and R. Gordon Butler Scholar in International Law at Boston University Law School. I thank Nora Freeman Engstrom, Brian Fitzpatrick, Nancy Moore, Jessica Silbey, Chris Robertson, Mike Maurer, Nathan Miller, Abigail Field, and the participants of Boston University School of Law’s faculty workshop for their comments. I am also grateful to Ryan Reimers and Robert Madden for their research assistance. The Author occasionally serves in litigation finance matters as an expert witness or consultant to plaintiffs, defendants, litigation funding firms, law firms, and investors.

The main debate surrounding litigation funding in recent years has focused on the question of disclosure of funding agreements. While the issue is important, predominantly because of its effects on the course and outcome of individual cases, far more important are bigger, interrelated questions that have systemic effects on the civil justice system, the legal…

The Ordinary and Extraordinary in Mass Tort Litigation

Andrew D. Bradt† & Sergio J. Campos††

† Shannon Cecil Turner Professor of Jurisprudence, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. Email: abradt@law.berkeley.edu. Phone: (510) 664-4984.

† † Professor of Law, Boston College Law School. Email: sergio.campos@bc.edu. Phone: (617) 552-4387. The authors would like to thank Abbe Gluck, Alexi Lahav, Samir Parikh, Adam Zimmerman, and the participants at a summer workshop at Boston College Law School for their comments. Emma McMillan and Chloe Heller provided excellent research assistance. All errors are our own.

Mass torts have inspired a number of innovative procedural approaches. They include creative uses of class actions, multidistrict litigation (“MDL”) and, more recently, the bankruptcy system. These procedural innovations have been challenged as a “revolution” that departs from “traditional litigation goals,” particularly our “deep-rooted tradition” of one having their “day in court.” In this Essay,…

MDL Strikes Back

Andrew D. Bradt, Zachary D. Clopton & D. Theodore Rave

Bradt is the Shannon Cecil Turner Professor of Jurisprudence at University of California Berkeley School of Law, Clopton is the Daniel Hale Williams Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law, and Rave is the Bernard J. Ward Centennial Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law. Thanks to Bruce Markel, Troy McKenzie, and David Molton for helpful conversations. Madeline Love and Jackson Roberg provided excellent research assistance.

One of the crucial insights of the judges responsible for the Multidistrict Litigation Act was that no one could opt out. Indeed, the whole idea of MDL is that everyone is stuck there, required to participate in pretrial proceedings until the litigation is resolved or the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) decides it’s time…

Current Online Issue

Copyright’s Invisible Hand: Subsidizing America’s Cultural Institutions

Guy A. Rub

Vincent J. Marella Professor of Law, Temple University Beasley School of Law.

The doctrine of copyright exhaustion conceals a substantial and underappreciated subsidy at the heart of American copyright law. For more than a century, it has operated as a deliberate congressional scheme transferring billions of dollars in value to cultural institutions, such as libraries, museums, and galleries. This Essay reconceptualizes copyright law as a system of…

The Beginnings Of The One Big Beautiful Bill Act: Placing The 2017 Tax Cuts And Jobs Act In Historical Perspective

Amanda Borwegen & Ajay K. Mehrotra

J.D. 2025, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law; B.A. 2019, Washington & Jefferson College. Stanford Clinton Sr. and Zylpha Kilbride Clinton Research Professor of Law, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law; Affiliated Professor of History, Northwestern University; and Research Professor, American Bar Foundation. An earlier version of this essay was presented at the 2025 American Association of Law School Conference. We thank the participants at that conference for their useful feedback, and to those colleagues and friends who reviewed and discussed drafts of this essay including Jennifer Bird-Pollan, Ari Glogower, Christopher Hanna, Andy Koppelman, Philip Postlewaite, Samy Abdelsalam, and Maggie Amen. We are grateful to Noah Taran for excellent research assistance, and to Jeena Patel and the staff of the Cornell Law Review for their assistance. All errors, of course, remain our own.

On July 4, 2025, President Donald J. Trump signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). This new law was built on the foundations of its immediate predecessor, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). This Essay examines the historical roots and contemporary implications of these two laws. It argues that both…

Volume 111

Issue 1

Birthright Citizenship and the Dunning School of Unoriginal Meanings - Jul 2025

The Federal Rules of Climate Change - Jul 2025

Volume 110

Issue 1

The “Section 122 Revolution” in Delaware Corporate Law and What to Do About It - Feb 2025

Treating the Administrative as Law: Responding to the “Judicial Aggrandizement” Critique - Dec 2024

Volume 109

Issue 1

New Vision, Old Model: How the FTC Exaggerated Harms When Rejecting Business Justifications for Noncompetes - Jun 2024

A Common Law for the Age of Amici: How the Party-Presentation Principle Can Help Identify Binding Precedent - May 2024

Volume 108

Issue 1

Antitrust Remedies for Fissured Work - Mar 2023

Weaponizing Code Enforcement - Feb 2023

An Alternative to Zombieing: Lawfare Between Russian and Ukraine and the Future of International Law - Jan 2023

Volume 107

Issue 4

Responses to Perceptions of Justice in Multidistrict Litigation: Voices from the Crowd

Anecdotes Versus Data in the Search for Truth About Multidistrict Litigation - Jan 2023

Data Versus More Data in Multidistrict Litigation - Jan 2023

Essays

Mass-Tort Trust and the Faustian Bargain - May 2026

Phase II: Managing the Remedial Phase in Aggregate Litigation - May 2026

The Alchemist’s Inversion - May 2026

Zombie Litigation: Claim Aggregation, Litigant Autonomy, and Funders’ Intermeddling - May 2026

The Ordinary and Extraordinary in Mass Tort Litigation - May 2026

MDL Strikes Back - May 2026

Her Fundamental Right To Procreate: The Unconstitutionality Of Abortion Bans - Mar 2026

A Call To Eradicate The Reid Technique: An Alternative To Deceptive Interrogations - Mar 2026

The Public/Private Home - Mar 2026

A Critical Analysis Of Rap Shield Laws - Mar 2026

Formulating Public Pharma - Mar 2026

Copyright’s Invisible Hand: Subsidizing America’s Cultural Institutions - Feb 2026

The Beginnings Of The One Big Beautiful Bill Act: Placing The 2017 Tax Cuts And Jobs Act In Historical Perspective - Feb 2026

Moving Forward from Brackeen and Solutions for the Greater Efficacy of the Indian Child Welfare Act - Jan 2026

The Unpropertied Internet - Jan 2026

Proportional Possession - Jan 2026

Rethinking Plyler: Preserving the Right to Education for Undocumented Children - Jan 2026

Income Taxation and the Regulation of Supreme Court Justices’ Conduct - Jan 2026

Cornell Law Review, Volume 111 - Dec 2025

Asian Americans and the Harm of Exceptionalized Inclusion - Aug 2025

Modern Cyber Warfare and International Law - Aug 2025

Undue Computational Experimentation: Can In Silico Experiments Allows Genus Claims to Survive? - Aug 2025

When Hard Cases Make Bad Law: A Theory of How Case Facts Affect Judge-Made Law - Aug 2025

(Non)Police Brutality - Aug 2025

Birthright Citizenship and the Dunning School of Unoriginal Meanings - Jul 2025

The Federal Rules of Climate Change - Jul 2025

Treating Each Applicant as an Individual in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and its Key Precedents - May 2025

Blazing a Trail for the Enhanced Enforcement of Women’s Rights: Erga Omnes Partes Standing - May 2025

Tax Law as Muse - May 2025

Is Death Different? - May 2025

Issue 3

Essays

“Shake the Hand that Feeds You”: Creating Custom Food Safety Certifications for Farm to School Programs - Aug 2022

Harming Competition and Consumers Under the Guise of Protecting Privacy: An Analysis of Apple’s iOS 14 Policy Updates - Jul 2022

Issue 2

Essays

Issue 1

Essays

Mitigating the PSLF Disaster: Building a Borrower-Friendly Student Loan Forgiveness Program - Nov 2021

Do Reason-Based Abortion Bans Prevent Eugenics? - Oct 2021

Volume 106

Issue 3

COVID, Sex Discrimination, and Medical Research - Apr 2021

Unequal Representation: Women in Clinical Research - Apr 2021

Issue 2

Essays

Copyright Silencing - Jan 2021

The Electors Clause and the Governor’s Veto - Jan 2021

Ford’s Hidden Fairness Defect - Oct 2020

New York Bail Reform: A Quick Guide to Common Questions and Concerns - Oct 2020

Issue 1

Essays

Book Review—Yearning to Breathe Free: Migration Related Confinement in America - Oct 2020

Volume 105

Issue 3

Essays