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The article discusses the court case Burnett v. Smith in which the Iowa Supreme Court declined to recognize an independent clause of action for money damages under its constitution and overruled a related case. It describes the details of the case filed by garbage truck driver Cory Burnett against Iowa Department of Transportation officer Philip Smith. It examines the court's observation that the Iowa judiciary of the mid-19th century did not recognize direct constitutional claims for damages.

The article examines the doctrine of qualified immunity in the U.S., focusing on the standard of clearly established law that forms the doctrine's core in its practical application. Topics discussed include importance of the clearly established standard to the retention of law enforcement personnel, the benefits of the clearly established standard for the community, and arguments on the need for future modifications of qualified immunity in retaining the clearly established standard.

The article discusses the critique of qualified immunity, which is under attack from various angles, with critics claiming that it creates barriers to relief in civil rights litigation. The author adds a new critique by arguing that there is no foundation for the interpretive premise of qualified immunity, and the Supreme Court's methodology in creating the doctrine as it disregarded the explicit statutory text of Civil Rights Act, which intended to create liability for violations.

Pauli Murray was a twentieth-century Black writer, priest, and legal thinker who has been, for the last two decades or so, the subject of a recovery project. As a result, Murray is now regarded as a crucial player in the history of civil rights litigation; in US feminist organizing and theology; and in Black feminist critique in relation to all of the above. Further, the recovery of Murray's contributions has coincided with the narration of Murray as someone who was (or might have been, in another time) trans. Following the lead of Isaac Julien's Looking for Langston (1989), and focusing on Murray's life and work as a poet, this meditative essay considers Pauli Murray as an enduring figure in and for a Black trans literary past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualified immunity has become a central target of the movement for police reform and racial justice since George Floyd's murder. And rightly so. Qualified immunity, which shields government officials from damages for constitutional violations even in many egregious cases, should have no place in federal law. But in critical respects, qualified immunity has become too much a focus of the conversation about constitutional-enforcement reform. The recent reappraisal offers unique opportunities to explore deeper problems and seek deeper solutions. This Article argues that the public and policymakers should reconsider other aspects of the constitutional-tort system--especially sovereign immunity and related protections for government entities--too. Qualified immunity arises from and interacts with sovereign immunity in doctrinal and functional terms. Both rest on concerns about defense-side expenses and federal-court dockets. Both create harm given the impacts of indemnification and the economics of unconstitutional acts. In important ways, the problem with qualified immunity is actually sovereign immunity. As one possible strategy, this Article recommends incremental yet systemic reform, contending that Congress should remove qualified immunity and allow entity liability at all levels of government for Fourth Amendment excessive-force claims while paving the way for further-reaching changes. Like qualified immunity, sovereign immunity and related protections for government entities fall hardest on populations that suffer a disproportional share of constitutional harm, including communities of color in the context of police violence. Increasing accountability in this area should help provide equal justice under law while showing that peeling away unwarranted defenses should not wreak havoc on individual or government finances, the judicial system, or substantive rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue analysed by the author is that of the institution of Presidential immunity pertaining to the President of the Republic of Poland, and operating in such a way that a sitting President cannot be held criminally liable before a common court for acts tantamount to offences. Inclining towards the essence of this solution and its consequences when it comes to respect for constitutional principles of legalism and equality before the law, the author at the same time seeks to assess the completeness of the provisions in effect in Poland, in so doing identifying a lack of clear directives as to how a former President (i.e. one who has left office) is to be held criminally liable. The conclusion reached by the author can be said to boil down to a recognition that the liability of a former President before Poland's Tribunal of State for offences or crimes committed is of an accessory nature where common courts are concerned, with the condition underpinning recognition of the Tribunal's primacy in matters of jurisdiction being the National Assembly's adoption of a Resolution holding a former President liable constitutionally, and potentially at the same time initiating action in respect of given offences. Any lack of such a National Assembly Resolution must give rise to a particular kind of reactivation - in respect of the former President - of jurisdiction in the dispensing of justice by common courts, given the fact that one of the negative procedural premises has ceased to be non-applicable. Thus, unlike in the case of a President still holding office, the cognition of the Tribunal of State in relation to a former President is neither exclusive nor automatic. Such observations have also stimulated work by the author to develop de lege ferenda postulates regarding the subject matter, as set against the wider background of Poland's political and constitutional system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heffernan v. City of Paterson, Mayor Jose Torres, Police Chief James Wittig, and Police Director Michael Walker modified and expanded constitutional tort law by (a) authorizing suits against public officials, employees, and municipalities for unconstitutionally retaliating against personnel on the mistaken belief that they engaged in constitutionally protected speech and (b) allowing such suits to proceed even when those personnel deny having exercised First Amendment rights. Heffernan also affords procedural protection to public employees disciplined for what was incorrectly considered protected speech. The implications for public personnel administration are (a) potentially greater difficulty for personnelists and managers to receive qualified immunity in summary judgments, (b) potential liability for a new type of constitutional tort with uncertain boundaries, and (c) and, unexpectedly, judicial intrusion into personnel administration by judges' second-guessing the reasonableness of managerial actions based on erroneous assessments of the constitutionality of employees' speech. Consequently, public personnelists and managers should closely follow Heffernan's progeny to protect rights and avoid suits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Supreme Court displays increasing hostility to constitutional tort claims. Although the Justices sometimes cast their stance as deferential to Congress, recent cases exhibit aggressive judicial lawmaking with respect to official immunity. Among the causes of turbulence in constitutional tort doctrine and the surrounding literature is a failure—not only among the Justices, but also among leading scholarly critics—to see interconnected problems in a sufficiently broad frame. This Article refocuses analysis along four interconnected dimensions. First, it examines relevant constitutional history, centrally including that of the maxim “for every right, a remedy.” That maxim has exerted significant generative force, but it has also been widely misunderstood. Second, the Article reviews and critiques recent Supreme Court decisions involving constitutional tort claims, many of which reflect fallacious assumptions. Third, the Article addresses the question, What role would damages and injunctive remedies for constitutional violations play in a justly and prudently designed legal system unfettered by historical accidents and path dependence? Commentators almost invariably assume that any gap between constitutional rights and individually effective, make-whole remedies is inherently regrettable. This Article refutes that premise. Although an ideal regime would substitute entity liability for officer liability and afford broad opportunities for victims of constitutional violations to vindicate their rights, it would not always authorize recovery of money damages. Finally, the Article considers reforms that the Supreme Court could effectuate in the absence of action by Congress. Among other proposals, it calls for expansion of municipal liability in suits under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and for reinvigoration of Bivens actions, but it defends the main outlines of qualified immunity doctrine against a spate of recent critics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Black lives are systematically undervalued by constitutional enforcement remedies. Section 1983 adopts, wholesale, the damages scheme from torts, which not only permits, but encourages, the consideration of race and gender to calculate actuarially "accurate" damages figures. Given that Blacks earn seventy-five percent of what white men earn on average, it's no surprise that this results in significantly lower damages awards. This Note argues that the use of racebased actuarial tables in constitutional torts is both unconstitutional and theoretically unsound. Yet, plaintiffs rarely challenge this practice and often even stipulate to its use. This presents a puzzle-- why does a bad practice go unchallenged?. Furthermore, the largely unchallenged adoption of race-based actuarial tables is symptomatic of constitutional law's broader, unquestioned embrace of the corrective justice framework. Corrective justice's appeal is that it ostensibly allows judges to focus on the narrow task of returning plaintiffs to a prior baseline rather than requiring legislative-type determinations of whether that "baseline" is normatively desirable. But, when the legal dispute turns on a government actor's violations of a citizen's constitutional rights, the harms and benefits exchanged between plaintiff and defendant are more complex and indeterminate than between purely private parties. The complicated relationship between parties in constitutional torts makes corrective justice's determinate inquiry uncertain and unsatisfactory. Indeed, the selection of a prior baseline requires judges to engage in value-laden choices about which harms and benefits--among the innumerable exchanged between citizen and government--are counted toward the plaintiff's baseline. Thus, this Note reveals that the purported normative neutrality that commends corrective justice in private torts is a mere illusion in the constitutional tort context. Finally, this Note argues that distributive justice emerges as a viable alternative framework for developing constitutional tort remedies. Under that framework, remedial schemes should be premised on moving toward a more ideal distribution rather than limited to returning plaintiffs to a particular baseline. While distributive justice is often rejected in tort litigation, the framework has much to offer in the constitutional tort context. Yet, much of constitutional law and scholarship has overlooked distributive justice and adopted a narrow, tort-like version of corrective justice-- a doubly value-laden choice. This Note demonstrates that selecting between the two frameworks should be a contested question--one that has broader implications for our understanding of constitutional law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Civil Rights Act of 1871 (codified at 42 U.S.C. §1983 and commonly referred to as Section 1983) provides a civil remedy for aggrieved persons to sue state actors who under the color of law violate federally protected rights. Since the 1960s, there has been an explosion of Section 1983 litigation in the federal courts against police officers and their employing municipal and county agencies. Due to a lack of official statistics and poor methodologies, research has yet to determine how common Section 1983 actions are against the police nationwide. This study examines the relationship between police crime and being named as a party defendant in a federal court Section 1983 civil action. Using a list of 5,545 nonfederal sworn law enforcement officers who were arrested for committing one or more crimes during the years 2005 to 2011, searches were conducted in the federal courts' Public Access to Courts Electronic Records (PACER) system to locate Section 1983 actions against those officers. The authors found that 22% of all arrested officers were named as a party defendant in a Section 1983 federal court civil action at some point during their law enforcement careers. Additional findings address various predictors of a police officer being sued in a Section 1983 action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Note proposes reforms to federal rules of procedure governing deadline extensions in civil litigation. Civil Rule 6(b)(1)(B), a representative example, allows deadline enlargements after a party files a document late, provided that the litigant "failed to act because of excusable neglect. " Unfortunately, courts interpret "excusable neglect" inconsistently and some circuits construe it narrowly. This allows judges to dismiss meritorious cases and bar appeals even when extending deadlines would not prejudice other parties or harm the proceedings. A more equitable framework would channel judicial discretion and encourage courts to resolve cases on the merits rather than on missed due dates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article role of fault in the defense of qualified immunity in the U.S., and includes impact of narrow source of law on qualified immunity defense; officer's immunity from damages in a constitutional tort action; and reformation of qualified immunity law.

Legal injury without harm is a common phenomenon in the law. Historically, legal injury without harm was actionable for at least nominal damages, and sometimes other remedies. The same is true today of many "traditional" private rights, for which standing is uncontroversial. Novel statutory claims, on the other hand, routinely face justiciability challenges: Defendants assert that plaintiffs' purely legal injuries are not injuries "in fact," as required to establish an Article III case or controversy. "Injury in fact" emerges from the historical requirement of "special damages" to enforce public rights, adapted to a modern procedural world. The distinction between public and private rights is unstable, however, with the result that many novel statutory harms are treated as "public," and thus subject to exacting justiciability analysis, when they could easily be treated as "private" rights for which legal injury without harm is sufficient for standing. Public and private act as rough proxies for "novel" and "traditional," with the former subject to more judicial skepticism. Applying "injury in fact" this way is hard to defend as a constitutional necessity, but might make sense prudentially, depending on the novelty and legal source of value for the harm. Taxonomizing these aspects of "harm" suggests that, even with unfamiliar harms, judicial discretion over value lessens the need for exacting injury analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article evaluates causation in multiple-actor stigma-plus claims in the U.S. Topics discussed include background of procedural due process, federal constitutional torts, and stigma-plus claims generally in the country; U.S. Supreme Court Paul v. Davis court case on the injury to reputation; and URI Student Senate v. Town of Narragansett court case on the same.

To honor ways of observing, listening, and bearing witness embodied in and inspired by Gerald P. Lopez's Rebellious Lawyering, this article depicts the self-glorifying culture shared by a cluster of impact civil rights litigation organizations and coalitions. The culture expresses a corrupted brand of regnant lawyering, incapable of ambitiously and effectively realizing the "experts-rule" problem solving openly espoused by some democratic theorists and in fact practiced by many lawyers. For those who aim to practice rebelliously, the article aims to outline an ethos, initially, too inconceivable to regard as credible and, in short time, too awful to tolerate for very long at all. Especially with the electoral triumph of Trumpism and Trump, the article urges an open challenge (by employees, clients, board members, funders--to name only some) to this disturbing culture and all those who nourish its hypocrisies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the issues of excessive force in the workhorse of modern civil rights litigation in the U.S. focusing on two cases Kingsley v. Hendrickson and Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents. Topics include history and development of Section 1983; court's incrementalist approach in developing Section 1983 case law, and use of doctrine of Fourteenth Amendment's substantive due process protections for establishing that excessive force cases should be replaced with an objective standard.

U.S. constitutional tort law enables individuals to recover money damages in civil suits against government officials and employees whose job-related actions violate their constitutional rights. Such legal accountability closely relates to professional accountability because liability for damages depends on whether the officials or employees violated “clearly established … constitutional rights of which a reasonable person” in their positions “would have known.” Municipalities face financial liability in constitutional tort suits when their policies, including failure to train their employees, directly cause breaches of individuals’ constitutional rights. State and local government contractors involved in “state action” are also potentially liable for their constitutional torts. However, in a series of decisions in the 2000s, the Supreme Court has weakened constitutional tort law as a mechanism for securing accountability by making it more difficult or even impossible for those alleging infringements on their constitutional rights to use this body of law to recover damages. The reduction in legal accountability can be partially compensated for by emphasis on constitutionality as a component of professional accountability in public administration education programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Police brutality has captured public and political attention, garnering protests, investigations, and proposed reforms. But judicial relief for excessive force victims is invariably doubtful. The judicial doctrine of qualified immunity, which favors government interests over those of private citizens, impedes civil rights litigation against abusive police officers under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. In particular, the doctrine forecloses lawsuits unless the law is clearly established that the force would be unlawful, requiring a high level of specificity and precedent that is difficult to satisfy. Further tilting the balance against excessive force victims, Fourth Amendment case law privileges the police perspective, incorporating and fostering police biases and racial stereotypes, and prohibiting inquiry into an officer's state of mind. Examining recent Supreme Court opinions on excessive force and qualified immunity, this Article finds that the two strands of law continue to endorse the "shoot first, think later" police culture of today. Moreover, they obstruct victim compensation and hinder the development of constitutional law defining the limitations on excessive force. Police brutality has captured public and political attention, garnering protests, investigations, and proposed reforms. But judicial relief for excessive force victims is invariably doubtful. The judicial doctrine of qualified immunity, which favors government interests over those of private citizens, impedes civil rights litigation against abusive police officers under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. In particular, the doctrine forecloses lawsuits unless the law is clearly established that the force would be unlawful, requiring a high level of specificity and precedent that is difficult to satisfy. Further tilting the balance against excessive force victims, Fourth Amendment case law privileges the police perspective, incorporating and fostering police biases and racial stereotypes, and prohibiting inquiry into an officer's state of mind. Examining recent Supreme Court opinions on excessive force and qualified immunity, this Article finds that the two strands of law continue to endorse the "shoot first, think later" police culture of today. Moreover, they obstruct victim compensation and hinder the development of constitutional law defining the limitations on excessive force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1871, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act. Section 1 is now more commonly known as 42 U.S. C. § 1983, the primary vehicle for constitutional tort litigation. Commonly interpreted against a background of tort principles, federal courts have imported--contrary to the plain language of the law--several immunities. This Comment focuses on one immunity in particular: absolute judicial immunity. Despite the 'judicial" qualifier, absolute judicial immunity has been extended to a great deal of parties who are not judges. Commentators have decried this expansion and criticized lower federal courts for subverting civilrights enforcement, exacerbating a pronounced rights-remedy gap, and departing from Supreme Court decisions that putatively cabin absolute judicial immunity. This Comment focuses on that last critique in particular. Although language in Supreme Court opinions certainly supports restricting absolute judicial immunity, this Comment proposes that the Supreme Court's muddled methodology in this area supports the expansion of absolute judicial immunity. Fidelity to Supreme Court precedent will further expand absolute judicial immunity. This Comment proposes one solution to further the values commentators believe are disserved by the outgrowth of absolute judicial immunity: a formalist regime that clothes only judges with absolute immunity and the rest with qualified immunity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents decision of courts in cases involving appellate advocacy in the U.S. Topics discussed include constitutional torts and qualified immunity in Dart Cherokee Basin Operating Co. v. Owens, federal jurisdiction and preemption and Tax Injunction Act and Preemption in Direct Marketing Ass'n v. Brohl, and allegations of constitutional violation in Johnson v. City of Shelby.

The article examine the legal issues related to state action doctrine in the U.S. Topics discussed include formation of the doctrine by the U.S. Supreme Court civil rights cases; the Civil Rights Act of 1875; decision of the court in the case 'Shelley v. Kramer;' and use of Public function tests in identifying the state's action.

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The article offers information on the history, purpose and significance of the constitutional tort law in the vindication of plaintiffs' rights. It presents comparison of official immunity with vindication of rights with reference to decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court in cases including Camreta v. Greene, Pearson v. Callahan, and Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, in which the Court interpreted the federal officers practices under the implied cause of actions.

The article focuses on the challenges for the self-represented parties during the civil litigation process. Topics discussed include assistance provided to the self-represented parties from the Queensland Public Interest Law Clearing House Inc. (QPILCH), views of the self-represented parties on the litigation process and need of assistance for the completion of tasks like drafting of an application in response to summary judgment.

Postconviction habeas comprises about 7 percent of federal district courts' dockets and between 8 and 20 percent of Supreme Court certiorari work. Scholars of all stripes condemn habeas as an empty "charade" lacking "coherent form." They consequently urge root-and-branch transformation. Resisting that consensus, this Article first advances a descriptive hypothesis: The Roberts Court's habeas jurisprudence is more internally coherent than generally believed--even if its internal logic has to date escaped substantial scholarly scrutiny. That jurisprudence is an instrument for sorting at the front end of litigation between cases warranting either less or more judicial attention. This account suggests that the Roberts Court titrates judicial attention by streaming cases into one of two channels via a diverse set of procedural and substantive mechanisms. In Track One, petitioners obtain scanty review and almost never prevail. In Track Two, by contrast, petitions receive more serious consideration and have a more substantial (if hardly certain) chance of success. This stylized account of the case law enables more focused investigation of the values that the Roberts Court pursues through its current articulation of habeas doctrine--and this is the Article's second task. Drawing on both doctrinal analysis and law-andeconomics models of litigation, the Article explores several possible justifications for the Court's observed bifurcated approach. Rejecting explanations based on state-centered federalism values, sorting, and sentinel effects, the Article suggests that some conception of fault best fits the role of a central organizing principle. This aligns habeas with constitutional-tort law, suggesting a previously unexamined degree of interdoctrinal coherence in the Roberts Court's attitude to otherwise distinct constitutional remedies. While the central aim of this Article is positive and descriptive in character, it concludes by examining some normative entailments ofhabeas's persistence in a bifurcated state. Specifically, I suggest that a better understanding of the Court's fault-based logic casts skeptical light on existing reform proposals, and is at least consistent with the possibility that habeas could still serve as a tool in some larger projects of criminal-justice reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drew S. Days, III, has lived an extraordinary life in the law. Born in the segregated South, Days graduated from Yale Law School in 1966 and pursued a career as a civil rights lawyer. In 1977, he was appointed Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. After his stint in the administration of President Jimmy Carter, Days became a professor at Yale Law School. Then, in 1993, he was appointed Solicitor General of the United States, serving in that position until 1996. He now holds the position of Alfred M. Rankin Professor Emeritus of Law and Professorial Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School. In 2011, he visited Touro Law Center to deliver the Howard A. Glickstein Civil Rights and Public Policy Lecture. As part of his visit, Professor Days was interviewed by Professor Rodger Citron about his life and career. An edited transcript of their conversation follows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human and civil rights organizations have long used litigation in an attempt to advance a particular cause, to bolster a certain right, or to bring about social change. A prominent example is strategic litigation filed on behalf of minority groups-including national and indigenous minorities. Such cases typically seek remedies from the government or public institutions due to discrimination or neglect experienced by minorities, or stemming from limitations on their ability to express or enjoy their culture and practices. In many cases, however, litigation fails or only partially succeeds in creating the kind of sustainable, widespread, and group-based change that the petitioners seek. Focusing on Israel and the Palestinian-Arab minority, which constitutes nearly one-fifth of the country's population, this Article explores the limitations and shortcomings of litigation as a strategy for obtaining collective rights. The Article examines three different kinds of collective rights that Palestinian-Arab petitioners have attempted to achieve through legal action in Israel: the right to political representation (in decision-making bodies); linguistic rights (in public accommodation); and equitable (group-based) allocation of public resources. The significance of these rights for national minorities is explored, along with the specifics of each of the cases highlighted and their outcomes. This Article demonstrates that while the outcome of each legal case was a 'success'-on a technical level- the judgments failed to achieve the substantive equality and group-based rights that the petitioners sought. Worse still, some of the judgments actually may have led to setbacks. Accordingly, this article argues that litigation has thus far been an insufficient tool for protecting the collective rights of the Palestinian-Arab minority, as the courts have failed to draft meaningful and sustainable frameworks for action and enforcement into their judgments. The article concludes by suggesting that given the challenges and political and social constraints faced by national minorities in legal and other public spheres, the law is dependent on the will of the courts. Thus, the courts must view their role more broadly and take a more expansive-and perhaps even activist-approach in rendering its rulings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Essay pays tribute to Justice Thurgood Marshall's race-transcending vision of universal human dignity, and explores the importance of building cross-racial alliances to modern civil rights advocacy. Justice Marshall's role as a "Race Man" is evident in much of his jurisprudence, where he fought for years to promote equal opportunity and equal justice. As an advocate for all marginalized people, Justice Marshall viewed equal justice as transcending race, and this Essay suggests that the multi-racial coalition that supported President Obama aligns with Marshall's vision. The Essay evaluates the civil rights movement through the lens of Justice Marshall's equality analysis, and calls for a multiracial coalition that transcends identity boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the development of the incentive zoning scheme of the privately owned public spaces in New York City. Topics discussed include laws governing the regulation of the privately owned public spaces, action of the state related to the private entities and mitigation of the problems related to the zoning resolution. It also discusses the ways for maximizing the public gains for the encouragement of the economic development.

The article offers information on the issues related to tort of lawful act conspiracy that is not considered as economic tort. It addresses the defendant's predominant purpose of lawful conduct that causes loss to the claimant under different possibilities including advancement of interests, defense of justification, and requirement for a test of malice. It informs about instances of abuse of rights based on test of malice and lawful act conspiracy.

The Salween borderlands can be conceptualised as spaces of exception where contradictory outcomes of state actions lead to state violence. The Burmese and Thai states have maintained their sovereign power and responded to economic regionalisation through violent practices in particular spaces. The political conflicts between the Burmese junta and ethnic minorities in the Salween borderlands have become war zones. The Burmese government in association with the Thai state and transnational dam investors has imposed the Salween dam projects on the Salween borderlands and people in the form of a terrorising state. The border people have experienced fear, danger and military violence, which has become part of the violence in everyday life. This paper provides an ethnographic study focused on specific events involving an explosion and death in a particular place and time on the Salween borderland. It shows the suffering of the border people in relation to sovereign power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article seeks to develop a single liability rule for U.S. constitutional torts, with the author noting that in reality various rules exist for these torts, the application of which exists independently from constitutional tort doctrine. He is primarily concerned with the awarding of damages for the violation of constitutional rights based on varying levels of a defendants' perceived immunity.

The article focuses on the history of the U.S. civil procedures and role of Edward Cooper, reporter at the U.S Civil Rules Advisory Committee in framing the laws related to civil rules of the U.S. It states that he accurately comprehended the constitutional and political requirement of the procedures in which the rules process functions. It depicts that Cooper along with the senior reporter, Daniel R. Coquillette, has aided in proper functioning of rules process as consistent as it can be expected in complex legal system. It discusses the U.S. Supreme court case of Brown v. Board of Education regarding civil rights litigation and the amendment of Rule 23 as a procedural basis of civil rights class actions.