This groundbreaking volume of The ANNALS provides the first overview of class action laws and related mechanisms around the world. It features 30 "country reports" by leading scholars, describing the adoption, characteristics and consequences to date of class action and non-class group litigation procedures ranging across North and Latin America, Australia, Asia and Europe. In December 2007, Stanford Law School and the Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies organized an international conference that studied the global spread of class actions and group litigation procedures. Scholars, jurists, and practitioners from around the world gathered to discuss and debate the use of group litigation procedures and initiate a research project on the evolution of class actions and aggregate litigation worldwide. This volume of The ANNALS is one result of that conference. Students, scholars and policymakers will find this anthology of reports to be an essential overview, providing a solid understanding of the effects of class actions around the globe.

Class action lawsuits--allowing one or a few plaintiffs to represent many who seek redress--have long been controversial. The current controversy, centered on lawsuits for money damages, is characterized by sharp disagreement among stakeholders about the kinds of suits being filed, whether plaintiffs' claims are meritorious, and whether resolutions to class actions are fair or socially desirable. Ultimately, these concerns lead many to wonder, Are class actions worth their costs to society and to business? Do they do more harm than good? To describe the landscape of current damage class action litigation, elucidate problems, and identify solutions, the RAND Institute for Civil Justice conducted a study using qualitative and quantitative research methods. The researchers concluded that the controversy over damage class actions has proven intractable because it implicates deeply held but sharply contested ideological views among stakeholders. Nevertheless, many of the political antagonists agree that class action practices merit improvement. The authors argue that both practices and outcomes could be substantially improved if more judges would supervise class action litigation more actively and scrutinize proposed settlements and fee awards more carefully. Educating and empowering judges to take more responsibility for case outcomes--and ensuring that they have the resources to do so--can help the civil justice system achieve a better balance between the public goals of class actions and the private interests that drive them.

Whatever deficits remain in the Canadian project to make justice available to all, class actions have been heralded as a success. They have been employed over the past twenty-five years to overcome barriers to justice for those who would otherwise have no recourse to the courts. First proposing a conceptualization of access to justice that moves beyond mere access to a court procedure, leading expert Jasminka Kalajdzic then methodically assesses survey data and case studies to determine how class action practice fulfills or falls short of its objectives. Class Actions in Canada is a timely exploration of the evolution of collective litigation in Canada.

International authors describe class action procedure in this concise, comparative, and empirical perspective on aggregate litigation.

"Social classes and class conflict have defined social relations ever since the division of society into hostile classes based on the exploitation and oppression of one class by another. This has become especially important in modern capitalist society through the globalization process, where class divisions have solidified with enormous inequalities in wealth and income that are the most glaring in the history of humanity." "Class and Class Conflict in the Age of Globalization presents a macro-sociological analysis of class and class conflict through a comparative-historical perspective. Focusing on class as the motive force of social transformation, Berberoglu explores class relations and class conflict in a variety of social settings, stressing the centrality of this phenomenon in defining social relations across societies in the age of globalization. Going beyond the analysis of class and class conflict on a world scale, the book addresses the role of the state, nation/nationalism, and religion, as well as the impact of race and gender on class relations in the early twenty-first century."--BOOK JACKET.

The aim of the book is to explore a range of topics illustrating the increasing relevance of taking legal actions on behalf of future generations. The entry into the Anthropocene era suggests the realization of a Copernican revolution in Law: defending the legal interests of future generations in order to keep their future horizons open.

This powerful, unsettling book gives us a rare glimpse behind the closed doors of global financial institutions by the winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics. When it was first published, this national bestseller quickly became a touchstone in the globalization debate. Renowned economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz had a ringside seat for most of the major economic events of the last decade, including stints as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and chief economist at the World Bank. Particularly concerned with the plight of the developing nations, he became increasingly disillusioned as he saw the International Monetary Fund and other major institutions put the interests of Wall Street and the financial community ahead of the poorer nations. Those seeking to understand why globalization has engendered the hostility of protesters in Seattle and Genoa will find the reasons here. While this book includes no simple formula on how to make globalization work, Stiglitz provides a reform agenda that will provoke debate for years to come. Rarely do we get such an insider's analysis of the major institutions of globalization as in this penetrating book. With a new foreword for this paperback edition.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.