The Costs of Class Actions: Allocation and Collective Redress in the U.S. Experience

Once a preserve of the American legal landscape, the class action device today transcends geographic boundaries. In the past decade, efforts have intensified to establish collective litigation instruments in diverse legal terrains outside the United States - including Europe - often with the common goal of allowing some form of collective legal redress while avoiding perceived disadvantages of class actions in the American experience. Today more than ever, from legislators to litigants to scholars, European reformers face the challenge - and the opportunity - of making fundamental choices about the scope and shape of the collective legal remedies they wish to make available. Choices about the shape of the class action device reflect foundational judgments about the proper allocation of costs, and there is much from the U.S. experience that can inform Europe's prospective reformers. This article describes the history and current status of class action rules in the U.S., and then compares class actions and another form of extra-compensatory damages - one type of punitive damages â as means of doing the same thing. Although neither punitive damages of this sort nor class actions generally have traditionally existed in civil law systems, they both - and especially this particular form of punitive damages - can, from an economic view, be made to vindicate the same kind of social cost accounting goals. By considering these legal devices together, we hope to shed light on crucial choices facing Europe as it grapples with how best to provide collective legal redress in light of the lessons of the U.S. experience with class actions.Class actions, Collective legal redress, Punitive damages, Extra-compensatory damages, Allocation of costs, Deterrence

Influence of linear reciprocating and multi-directional sliding on PEEK wear performance and transfer film formation

Because of their light weight, chemical resistance, and self-lubricating properties, polymers are used in applications ranging from biomedical to aerospace. Some polymers exhibit significant differences in wear resistancebased on whether they are in unidirectional or multidirectional sliding. Shear induced polymer chain orientation is believed to be responsible for this behavior. Polyetheretherketone (PEEK) has excellent wear resistance, but its multidirectional sliding behavior has not been thoroughly investigated. A factorial multidirectional pin-on-plate wear study of PEEK was conducted with a focus on molecular weight and sliding path directionality. These factors were studied for their correlation to over all wear performance. Additionally, transfer film thickness was measured at locations along the wear path using white light interferometry. Wear in PEEK was shown to depend significantly on path shape and direction. The lowest wear configuration also resulted in quantifiably thinner and more continuous transfer films. A result of this work has been a greater understanding of PEEK wear mechanisms in various sliding configurations

Effects of contact pressure, molecular weight, and supplier on the wear behavior and transfer film of polyetheretherketone (PEEK)

Polyetheretherketone (PEEK) is a designation given to materials of the polyaryletherketone family having a characteristic distribution of ether and ketone groups in the polymer backbone. PEEK materials have high strength and chemical resistance as well as very high melting points and glass transition temperatures. Because of this combination of properties, PEEK materials find use for wear application in extreme environments where they provide a light-weight and corrosion resistant bearing material that often does not require lubrication. This study focused on determining the effects of supplier and molecular weight on the wear of particular PEEK materials, in addition to the effect of contact pressure. Multidirectional wear testingwas performed on four PEEK materials. The materials were obtained from two different suppliers, and two molecular weights were chosen for each supplier. Extensive analysis of transfer films produced during wear testing was performed using optical microscopy. White light profilometry was used to measure transfer film thickness in order to calculate a mean film thickness for given experimental conditions. Dynamic mechanical analysis, as well as gel permeation chromatography and differential scanning calorimetry were used to characterize each material\u27s viscoelastic behavior, molecular weight, and crystallinity, respectively. It was found that the wear of PEEK materials was significantly affected by both contact pressure and molecular weight, but not by supplier. However, an interaction was observed that showed the low molecular weight material from one of the suppliers was more vulnerable to wear at high contact pressures than the other three materials. Results of transfer film analysis showed that film thickness was greatest in locations where pin sliding direction was perpendicular to the counterface roughness direction, but that mean transfer film thickness did not correlate to wear amounts. This work is significant because it highlights the fact that tribologically relevant polymers, such as PEEK materials, vary greatly in terms of their polymer morphology and processing history, and this variation must be recognized by investigators when reporting wear data

The Nuclear Pore Complex as a Flexible and Dynamic Gate

Nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) perforate the nuclear envelope and serve as the primary transport gates for molecular exchange between nucleus and cytoplasm. Stripping the megadalton complex down to its most essential organizational elements, one can divide the NPC into scaffold components and the disordered elements attached to them that generate a selective barrier between compartments. These structural elements exhibit flexibility, which may hold a clue in understanding NPC assembly and function. Here we review the current status of NPC research with a focus on the functional implications of its structural and compositional heterogeneity.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant R01GM077537)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant R01AR065484

Chevron and Agency Norm-Entrepreneurship

If Congress has delegated lawmaling authority to an agency and has not specifically addressed an issue covered by the statute, the Supreme Court\u27s Chevron doctrine requires judges to defer to reasonable agency interpretations. Justice Scalia maintains that deference is grounded, at least in part, in the executive branch\u27s own lawmaling authority; hence, judges should defer to virtually all agency interpretations not inconsistent with statutory plain meaning. This Symposium reveals that Scalia\u27s reading is gathering academic support. Yet the Court continues to reject his understanding of Chevron, as illustrated by the recent decision of Gonzales v. Oregon. The Federal Controlled Substances Act of 1970 (CSA) makes it a crime to possess or distribute addictive or psychotropic drugs. The Act requires doctors to register before they can issue such controlled substances, and the Attorney General has the authority to deny registration when it would be in the public interest. In 1994, Oregon\u27s legislature enacted a statute authorizing doctors to administer lethal drugs to terminally ill patients. Concluding that Oregon\u27s statutory regime involved wrongful use of controlled substances, Attorney General Ashcroft in 2001 issued a Directive interpreting the CSA to bar such medical practices, effectively preempting Oregon\u27s euthanasia law. Ashcroft\u27s interpretation is an example of agency norm-entrepreneurship, the reasoned application of fundamental norms by agencies when they apply statutory directives. Over Scalia\u27s objections, the Supreme Court rejected Ashcroft\u27s interpretation in Oregon. Because there had been no congressional delegation, the Court found Chevron deference inapposite; the majority further ruled that the public interest standards of the Act did not justify preempting state regulation of medical practices. As Oregon illustrates, agencies have become an important situs for the expression and testing of public norms. We argue that their norm-entrepreneurship complicates the Chevron debate. When public values are implicated, the sharp rule-like edges of both the Chevron framework and Scalia\u27s alternative will be fuzzier and more standard-like in practice

Synthesis of Colloidal Mn2+:ZnO Quantum Dots and High-TC Ferromagnetic Nanocrystalline Thin Films

We report the synthesis of colloidal Mn2+-doped ZnO (Mn2+:ZnO) quantum dots and the preparation of room-temperature ferromagnetic nanocrystalline thin films. Mn2+:ZnO nanocrystals were prepared by a hydrolysis and condensation reaction in DMSO under atmospheric conditions. Synthesis was monitored by electronic absorption and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopies. Zn(OAc)2 was found to strongly inhibit oxidation of Mn2+ by O2, allowing the synthesis of Mn2+:ZnO to be performed aerobically. Mn2+ ions were removed from the surfaces of as-prepared nanocrystals using dodecylamine to yield high-quality internally doped Mn2+:ZnO colloids of nearly spherical shape and uniform diameter (6.1 +/- 0.7 nm). Simulations of the highly resolved X- and Q-band nanocrystal EPR spectra, combined with quantitative analysis of magnetic susceptibilities, confirmed that the manganese is substitutionally incorporated into the ZnO nanocrystals as Mn2+ with very homogeneous speciation, differing from bulk Mn2+:ZnO only in the magnitude of D-strain. Robust ferromagnetism was observed in spin-coated thin films of the nanocrystals, with 300 K saturation moments as large as 1.35 Bohr magneton/Mn2+ and TC > 350 K. A distinct ferromagnetic resonance signal was observed in the EPR spectra of the ferromagnetic films. The occurrence of ferromagnetism in Mn2+:ZnO and its dependence on synthetic variables are discussed in the context of these and previous theoretical and experimental results.Comment: To be published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society Web on July 14, 2004 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/ja048427j

Broad-Scale Genetic And Compositional Monitoring Of Aquatic Vertebrate Populations: A Proof Of Concept In The Interior Columbia River And Upper Misouri River Basins

Monitoring fish and amphibian populations is essential for evaluating conservation efforts and the status and trends of individual species, but measuring abundance is time-consuming and problematic at large scales. Also, relations between fish populations and their surrogates, such as habitat characteristics, are often obscure. As an alternative, genetic assessment and monitoring offers promise as an indicator of population status and trends by providing information on genetic diversity, connectivity among populations, and the prevalence of hybridization with non-native species. We have undertaken intensive sampling of native and nonnative fishes and amphibians in streams monitored by the Pacfish/Infish Biological Opinion Monitoring Program, which includes a spatially comprehensive, random sample of subbasins in the interior Columbia River Basin and upper Missouri River Basin. We have also developed a panel of ~100 single nucleotide polymorphism markers for cutthroat trout, redband trout, and rainbow trout to describe patterns of hybridization and landscape genetic structure. If fully realized, analyses of tissues sampled from over 1500 streams in Montana, Idaho, eastern Oregon, and eastern Washington on federal lands should permit broad-scale evaluations of the status and distribution of much of the aquatic vertebrate fauna and enable detection of responses to climate change. Preliminary results of sampling at nearly 700 sites on almost 300 western Montana and northern Idaho streams indicate that westslope cutthroat trout occupy headwater sites in most of their historical range except in the Kootenai and Missouri River basins, brook trout are more widely distributed than previously recognized, and the taxonomic complexity of sculpins is underappreciated