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622 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 7 (2009)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0622 and id is 1 raw text is: The Globalization of Class Actions: An Overview By DEBORAH R. HENSLER In less than a decade, the number of countries that per- mit representative litigation by private actors has mul- tiplied dramatically. A minority of these procedures share all the features of the American class action for money damages. But there is a trend toward permitting private individuals and organizations to come forward on behalf of absent parties to obtain injunctive or declaratory relief or monetary compensation in some or all circumstances. Whether these procedures will spread to other countries or within countries to a wide variety of substantive legal matters and whether in par- ticular private actors will be allowed to claim money damages in many or all instances is uncertain. Currently, the key obstacles to effective implementa- tion of class action procedures are traditional legal funding rules that do not easily accommodate the real- ities of representative litigation. Keywords: class actions; group litigation; mass torts; international civil procedure; transna- tional litigation The importance of access to justice, as a funda- mental human right which ought to be readily available to all, is clearly a new consideration that stimulates fresh thinking about representative or grouped proceedings.' 1. Introduction Around the world, individuals, nongovern- mental organizations (NGOs), and public offi- cials are turning to courts for remedies for mass harms: mass injuries caused by defective products or environmental exposure to toxic chemicals, mass financial losses resulting from violations of antitrust (anticompetition) law, Deborah R. Hensler is Judge John W Ford Professor of Dispute Resolution at Stanford Law School. NOTE: I am grateful to my colleague Christopher Hodges and to members of the Bay Area Civil Procedure Forum and particularly Professor Richard Marcus for comments and suggestions. I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Radek Goral. DOI: 10.1177/0002716208328327 ANNALS, AAPSS, 622, March 2009

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