Suchergebnisse

"Whatever deficits remain in the Canadian project to make justice available to all, class actions have been heralded as a success. They have been employed over the past twenty-five years to overcome barriers to justice for those who would otherwise have no recourse to the courts. First proposing a conceptualization of access to justice that moves beyond mere access to a court procedure, leading expert Jasminka Kalajdzic then methodically assesses survey data and case studies to determine how class action practice fulfills or falls short of its objectives. Class Actions in Canada is a timely exploration of the evolution of collective litigation in Canada."--

In January 2020, a divided 9th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the long running case, Juliana v. United States. The plaintiffs, 21 young citizens and an environmental organization, had sued the U.S. president and various federal agencies, claiming that their continued authorization and subsidization of fossil fuels contributed to catastrophic climate change that was incompatible with sustained human life. They argued that these harms constituted a violation of their constitutional rights to due process and equal protection of the law, and sought declaratory relief as well as an injunction requiring the government to phase out fossil fuel emissions and draw down excess carbon dioxide emissions. The appeals court, like the District Court below, agreed with the plaintiffs that the evidence filed "leaves little basis for denying that climate change is occurring at an increasingly rapid pace" and that "this unprecedented rise stems from fossil fuel combustion and will wreak havoc on the Earth's climate if unchecked". The Court also accepted the plaintiffs' expert evidence that "the federal government has long promoted fossil fuel use despite knowing that it can cause catastrophic climate change". In the end, however, the majority concluded that the claims were not justiciable in that it was beyond the power of the court to order, design or supervise the plaintiffs' requested remedy. The panel "reluctantly concluded that the plaintiffs' case must be made to the political branches or to the electorate at large".

Are existing ethical norms adequate to address the realities of class proceedings? In this article, the author explores the premise that current rules of professional conduct are effective when applied to class action praxis. In Part I, she discusses the peculiar features of class proceedings and how they create unique challenges to the ethical conduct of litigation. In Part II, the author confronts a fundamental (and often overlooked) question: Who is the client in a class proceeding to whom ethical duties are owed? Having identified the range of judicial and academic views on the unique dimensions of class actions, she turns, in Part III, to a discussion of two sources of ethical norms that seek to respond to them: the strictures of class proceedings legislation and the judicial development of rules and guidelines. Throughout the article, the author relies upon information obtained from seven judges interviewed for this project. The article concludes with proposals for amendment to Ontario's Rules of Professional Conduct that would more accurately address the realities of this model of litigation.