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The class action has emerged as the settlement instrument of choice in mass harm cases such as the Volkswagen emissions scandal or the Deepwater Horizon aftermath. But the class action has also reemerged in the mass tort context, most notably in the NFL Concussion litigation. After seemingly collapsing following the Amchem and Ortiz Supreme Court decisions of the 1990s, the class action device is getting an important second life in courts today. This Article argues that the new class action has a feature that should increase its doctrinal acceptability: forms of active class member participation. What we term the "participatory class action" emerges from two developments. The first is the technological transformation in the means of communication with class members and among the class members themselves. The second is that the current class action almost invariably arises from the initial aggregation and centralization of large numbers of individual suits and putative class actions in the Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) process. As a result, classes are comprised not simply of lawyers and absent class members, but of hundreds or even thousands of individual claims, with individuals capable of monitoring the class and represented by independent counsel. With over forty percent of the actively litigated civil cases in federal courts now in the MDL dockets, the transformation in mass resolution is well underway. In these new consolidations, the assumptions of older law about absent class member passivity break down. In the popular typology in academic examination of class actions, class action law should insist on the loyalty of agents and the importance of individual ability to exit as guarantors of systemic legitimacy. In the participatory class action, voice emerges as a critical element, with the capacity of the normally silent class members to assert their interests and their views. As with the need for class action law to move from first-class mail to Twitter, so too must the law embrace the implications of real participation by those represented in the assessment of representational propriety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the prosecution and defense of various class action claims under Rule 23 of the U.S. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure during the first 10 years of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts' tenure as the head of the nation's top court, and it mentions the concept of class action exceptionalism and a cy pres legal doctrine. Several class action litigation matters are examined, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. v. Dukes and Comcast Corp. v. Behrend.

The article discusses due process of law relative to civil litigation system. It discusses due process as a revolutionary ideal during the war of independence between Great Britain and the U.S. relative to the federal constitutions of U.S. states which identified the social contract between countries. It explores pragmatic due process which could be depended by the civil litigation system if it would recapture the confidence of public relative to financial security and health.

Focuses on issues related to the class action counterreformation in the U.S. Comparison between reform and counterreformation of class actions; Reactions of the American courts toward classic class actions; Variations on the class actions theme.

The article focuses on human rights violations and mass torts litigations. The landmark human rights cases that have been litigated to judgment or settled in the United States' federal court system during the past twenty years have borne witness to the existence and inhumanity of the massive genocides that marred the twentieth century. Human rights litigation has contributed important principles and procedures to other, more mundane, forms of mass commercial and mass tort litigation. Litigation that alleges violations of international law and pursues tort claims fulfills a unique role in creating and sustaining an official record of crimes against humanity.