The title of the article, Class Action Act Doesn't Go Far Enough, is both obvious - nobody who believes in tort reform considered it a panacea to bring all multi-state class action suits into the Federal Court system rather than allowing lawyers to "court shop" among the states - and a bit of a misnomer. Author Mark Moller's case is not merely that it doesn't go far enough, but that it goes in exactly the wrong direction. He says, and I believe he's right, that class actions should be broken up among many courts. He doesn't say it, but I'd say that the obvious way to do that would be to insist that [OK, force] cases be tried in the jurisdiction - the more local, the better - in which the harms occurred. That way we get many experimental solutions, rather than one centrally imposed solution.
Put simply, one-shot legal proceedings -- like all other forms of central planning -- carry a big risk of error. Inevitably, more bad claims are upheld, innocent defendants are extorted, and the public interest is ill-served -- no matter what the quality of judge tasked with managing these cases.
I need to learn more about this Judge Easterbrook that he cites.
I'd like to see more evidence for this claim, though, "Decentralization also checks abuse by lawyers. Those who truly protect their clients' interests will attract more plaintiffs to their cases; those who do not will attract fewer."
You'd hope, anyway. "[T]ruly protect their clients' interests" is too wide open a phrase.
