Resolving Mass Disputes

ADR and Settlement of Mass Claims

由克里斯托弗·霍奇斯编辑中心e for Socio-Legal Studies and Wolfson College, Oxford, UK and Astrid Stadler, Professor and Chair in Civil Law, Procedural Law and Private International Law, and Comparative Law, University of Konstanz, Germany

The landscape of mass litigation in Europe has changed impressively in recent years, and collective redress litigation has proved a popular topic. Although much of the literature focuses on the political context, contentious litigation, or how to handle cross-border multi-party cases, this book has a different focus and a fresh approach.

‘Legal systems worldwide are increasingly grappling with the legal and logistic complexities of collective actions and claims. Although the US-style class action contrasts sharply with the European focus on individual litigation, policy-makers throughout Europe are seeking to reduce judicial budgets, to enhance self-reliance through ADR schemes and to introduce new and efficient forms of redress through collective litigation. Meanwhile, the market for justice is becoming increasingly globalised. Thus, a sense of judicial competition between jurisdictions may accelerate a European movement towards new procedures and paradigms in the realm of collective redress. Against this background, this formidable collection of comparative essays on collective redress and ADR is both timely and unique. This book shows viable pathways to ensuring efficient and balanced collective redress. Excellent contributors and editors have jointly succeeded in connecting ADR and collective redress in ways previously considered disparate.’
– Willem H. van Boom, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands

‘Resolving Mass Disputes is a timely, informative, and stimulating book. The contributed chapters analyze the phenomena of interest – mass dispute resolution in court-based systems and their alternatives – in numerous countries and the EU, and the insights they afford are nicely drawn together in a comprehensive introduction by the editors, Christopher Hodges and Astrid Stadler. As a result, the reader is enabled to understand and begin to evaluate comparatively the various mechanisms by which a broad array of common law and civil law systems currently resolve mass disputes.’
– Stephen B. Burbank, University of Pennsylvania Law School, US