{"id":5106,"date":"2026-05-11T22:36:28","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T22:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/?p=5106"},"modified":"2026-05-11T22:36:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T22:36:29","slug":"the-ordinary-and-extraordinary-in-mass-tort-litigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/2026\/05\/11\/the-ordinary-and-extraordinary-in-mass-tort-litigation\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ordinary and Extraordinary in Mass Tort Litigation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Mass torts have inspired a number of innovative procedural approaches. They include creative uses of class actions, multidistrict litigation (\u201cMDL\u201d) and, more recently, the bankruptcy system. These procedural innovations have been challenged as a \u201crevolution\u201d that departs from \u201ctraditional litigation goals,\u201d particularly our \u201cdeep-rooted tradition\u201d of one having their \u201cday in court.\u201d In this Essay, we question just how \u201ctraditional\u201d or \u201cdeep-rooted\u201d these goals are. While mass torts do indeed raise challenging issues of due process and federalism, we show that these issues are neither new nor do they depart from a \u201cdeep-rooted tradition,\u201d at least not one that isn\u2019t often honored only in the breach. Instead, we suggest that history reveals an alternative \u201ctradition,\u201d one that we argue is much more normatively appealing, sensitive to the interests of the parties, and accommodating of practical procedural efforts to resolve nationwide and dispersed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To read this Essay, please click here: <em><a href=\"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/05\/Bradt-Campos-essay-final.pdf\">The Ordinary and Extraordinary in Mass Tort Litigation<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mass torts have inspired a number of innovative procedural approaches. They include creative uses of class actions, multidistrict litigation (\u201cMDL\u201d) and, more recently, the bankruptcy system. These procedural innovations have been challenged as a \u201crevolution\u201d that departs from \u201ctraditional litigation goals,\u201d particularly our \u201cdeep-rooted tradition\u201d of one having their \u201cday in court.\u201d In this Essay,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,694,23,25,26,28,693,48,696],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-63","category-clr-print-volume-110","category-current-clr-print-vol","category-current-print-issue","category-essay","category-issue","category-issue-7-clr-print-volume-109","category-print","category-print-volume-110"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5106"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5115,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5106\/revisions\/5115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/lawreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}