By James Maxeiner. 114 Penn St. L. Rev. ___. *(forthcoming in Iqbal Symposium Issue)
This author welcomes responses to this abstract and the upcoming article. The author may be contacted at:
- Phone: (410) 837-4628
- Email: jmaxeiner@ubalt.edu
Abstract:
Section 11 of the contemporary Pennsylvania Constitution’s Declaration of Rights promises that “All courts shall be open; and every man for an injury done him in his lands, goods, person or reputation shall have remedy by due course of law, and right and justice administered without sale, denial or delay.” America’s litigation lawyers know that these fine words do not describe the reality of our system of civil justice. Less than a year ago the American College of Trial Lawyers pronounced our system a “captive to cost, delay and gamesmanship” and “in serious need of repair.” The Iqbal decision is an attempt to deal with one of many failings of our system.
Globalization challenges America to construct a system of civil justice that works. Foreign clients find litigating here a “nightmare.” So, too, do our own people, but they do not know alternatives. The Report of the American College of Trial Lawyers reminds us that our foreign friends know alternatives that work well; no wonder that they are disappointed here.
The written contribution will take a foreign lawsuit from beginning to end. It will show ways that one foreign legal system minimizes costs and delay and promotes decisions according to justice and right. It will show how that system comes closer to fulfilling the promises of Section 11 than does our own.
Time constraints preclude presenting the full written contribution. The oral conference presentation will focus on problems specific to the Iqbal decision.
Both the oral and the written presentations are based on a book planned to appear later this year in Carolina Academic Press and tentatively titled Practical Global Civil Justice: Decisions According to Law in the United States, Germany and Korea. The draft chapters of the book are available here.