Marcus on the Stated Purposes of CAFA

Rick Marcus has published an article scrutinizing the stated purposes for the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 titled, Assessing CAFA's Stated Jurisdictional Policy, 156 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1765 (2008). Rick acknowledges the unarticulated, non-neutral political motivations for expanding federal jurisdiction over class actions. But "[f]avoring use of federal procedures for class actions makes sense, as does favoring expansion of federal court jurisdiction to cure problems created by overlapping class actions," and those are CAFA's two stated rationales. Rick concludes that, despite all the incendiary rhetoric about CAFA, its enduring effect is yet to be determined.