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Prof. Sherry Posts Essay on CAFA's Impact on Erie Doctrine

By A. Benjamin Spencer

Professor Suzanna Sherry has posted her essay Overruling Erie: Nationwide Class Actions and National Common Law on SSRN. Here is the Abstract:

In this essay, part of a symposium on the Class Action Fairness Act, I argue that CAFA should be read as having overruled Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins as applied to the nationwide class actions that fall within CAFA's jurisdictional grant. In the principal paper on which this essay comments, Linda Silberman suggests that Congress should overrule Klaxon v. Stentor Electric Mfg. Co. That suggestion, I propose, amounts to swimming halfway across a river. One of Congress's stated goals in enacting CAFA was to restore the intent of the founding generation. Examining the history and purposes of both diversity jurisdiction and the Rules of Decision Act demonstrates that unless CAFA is read to overrule Erie, it has achieved only half its goal.

The full-text version of the article can be downloaded at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1087435.

Full post as published by Federal Civil Practice Bulletin on February 11, 2008 (boomark / email).