Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-r5zm4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-01T00:59:11.620Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Legislating Incentives for Attorney Representation in Civil Rights Litigation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2022

Sean Farhang  and
Douglas M. Spencer
Sean Farhang
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Douglas M. Spencer*
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
*
Contact the corresponding author, Douglas Spencer, at doug.spencer@law.uconn.edu.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Congress routinely relies on private lawsuits to enforce its mandates. In this article, we investigate whether, when it does so, the details of the legislation can importantly influence the extent to which the private bar is mobilized to carry out the prosecutorial function. Using an original and novel data set based on review of archived litigation documents for cases filed in the Northern and Eastern Districts of California over the two decades spanning 1981–2000, we examine the effects of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which increased economic damages available to Title VII job discrimination plaintiffs, on their ability to secure counsel. We find that over the course of the decade after passage, the law substantially increased the probability that Title VII plaintiffs would be represented by counsel and that in doing so it reversed a decade-long trend in the opposite direction.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Law and Courts , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , Fall 2014 , pp. 241 - 271
Copyright
© 2014 by the Law and Courts Organized Section of the American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

We are grateful to Kevin Clermont, Bert Kritzer, Gwendolyn Leachman, Justin McCrary, J. J. Prescott, Kevin Quinn, Shauhin Talesh, and Abby Wood for helpful comments and suggestions. Earlier drafts of this article were presented at the 2012 annual meeting of the American Law and Economics Association, the 2011 annual meeting of the Law and Society Association, and the Berkeley Empirical Legal Studies colloquium at the Berkeley Law School in 2011. We thank the American Bar Association’s Litigation Research Fund for its generous support of this project.

References

Bai, Jushan, and Perron, Pierre. 1998. “Estimating and Testing Linear Models with Multiple Structural Changes.” Econometrica 66:47–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bai, Jushan, and Perron, Pierre. 2003. “Computation and Analysis of Multiple Structural Change Models.” Journal of Applied Econometrics 18:1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bardach, Eugene, and Kagan, Robert A.. 2002. Going by the Book: The Problem of Regulatory Unreasonableness. Rev. ed. Philadelphia: Translation Publishers.Google Scholar
Barry, Daniel, and Hartigan, J. A.. 1993. “A Bayesian Analysis for Change Point Problems.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 35:309–19.Google Scholar
Blasi, Gary L., and Doherty, Joseph W.. 2010. “California Employment Discrimination Law and Its Enforcement: The Fair Employment and Housing Act at 50.” Manuscript, Center for Law and Public Policy, University of California, Los Angeles, and RAND Corporation. http://ssrn.com/paper=1596906.Google Scholar
Brambor, Thomas, Clark, William, and Golder, Matt. 2006. “Understanding Interaction Models: Improving Empirical Analyses.” Political Analysis 14:63–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burke, Thomas F. 2002. Lawyers, Lawsuits, and Legal Rights: The Battle over Litigation in American Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Cameron, Charles, and Park, Jee-Kwang. 2009. “How Will They Vote? Predicting the Future Behavior of Supreme Court Nominees, 1937–2006.” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 6:485–511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooter, Robert D., and Rubinfeld, Daniel L.. 1994. “An Economic Model of Legal Discovery.” Journal of Legal Studies 23:435–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooter, Robert D., and Ulen, Thomas. 2004. Law and Economics. 4th ed. Boston: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Davies, Julie. 1997. “Federal Civil Rights Practice in the 1990’s: The Dichotomy between Reality and Theory.” Hastings Law Journal 48:197–270.Google Scholar
Derfner, Mary Frances. 1977. “One Giant Step: The Civil Rights Attorney’s Fees Awards Act of 1976.” Saint Louis University Law Journal 21:441–51.Google Scholar
Drahozal, Christopher. 2009. “Arbitration Costs and Contingent Fee Contracts.” Vanderbilt Law Review 59:729–91.Google Scholar
Epp, Charles R. 1998. The Rights Revolution: Lawyers, Activists, and Supreme Courts in Comparative Perspective. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eskridge, William N. Jr.,, Frickey, Phillip P., and Garrett, Elizabeth. 2001. Cases and Materials on Legislation: Statutes and the Creation of Public Policy. 3rd ed. Paul, Saint, MN: West Group.Google Scholar
Farhang, Sean. 2009. “Congressional Mobilization of Private Litigants: Evidence from the Civil Rights Act of 1991.” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 6:1–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farhang, Sean. 2010. The Litigation State: Public Regulation and Private Lawsuits in the U.S. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fiorina, Morris P. 1982. “Legislative Choice of Regulatory Forms: Legal Process or Administrative Process?” Public Choice 39:33–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frymer, Paul. 2007. Black and Blue: African Americans, the Labor Movement, and the Decline of the Democratic Party. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Fusco, Anthony J., Collins, Nancy B., and Birnbaum, Julian R.. 1979. “Chicago’s Eviction Court: A Tenant’s Court of No Resort.” Urban Law Journal 17:93–132.Google Scholar
Galanter, Marc. 1974. “Why the ‘Haves’ Come Out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change.” Law and Society Review 9:95–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galanter, Marc, and Luban, David. 1993. “Poetic Justice: Punitive Damage and Legal Pluralism.” American University Law Review 42:1393–1463.Google Scholar
General Accounting Office. 1999. Equal Employment Opportunity: Complaint Caseloads Rising, with Effects of New Regulations on Future Trends Unclear. GAO/GGD-99-128. Washington, DC: General Accounting Office.Google Scholar
Giles, Micheal W., Hettinger, Virginia A., and Peppers, Todd. 2001. “Picking Federal Judges: A Note on Policy and Partisan Selection Agendas.” Political Research Quarterly 54:623–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giles, Micheal W., Hettinger, Virginia A., and Peppers, Todd. 2002. “Measuring the Preferences of Federal Judges: Alternatives to Party of the Appointing President.” Working paper, Emory University.Google Scholar
Goldfarb, Lewis H., et al. 2006. “Report on Contingent Fees in Class Action Litigation.” Review of Litigation 25:459–96.Google Scholar
Govan, Reginald C. 1993. “Honorable Compromises and the Moral High Ground: The Conflict between the Rhetoric and the Content of the Civil Rights Act of 1991.” Rutgers Law Review 46:1–242.Google Scholar
Greiner, D. James, and Wolos Pattanayak, Cassandra. 2012. “Randomized Evaluation in Legal Assistance: What Difference Does Representation (Offer and Actual Use) Make?” Yale Law Journal 121:2118–2214.Google Scholar
Greve, Michael S. 1989. “Environmentalism and Bounty Hunting.” Public Interest 97:15–29.Google Scholar
Hickox, Stacy A. 2010. “Ensuring Enforceability and Fairness in the Arbitration of Employment Disputes.” Widener Law Review 16:101–74.Google Scholar
Johnson, Earl Jr., 1980. “Lawyers’ Choice: A Theoretical Appraisal of Litigation Investment Decisions.” Law and Society Review 15:567–610.Google Scholar
Kagan, Robert A. 2001. Adversarial Legalism: The American Way of Law. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kornhauser, Lewis A., and Revesz, Richard L.. 1994. “Multidefendant Settlements: The Impact of Joint and Several Liability.” Journal of Legal Studies 23 (1): 41–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kritzer, Herbert M. 2001. “Lawyer Fees and Lawyer Behavior in Litigation: What Does the Empirical Evidence Really Say?” Texas Law Review 80:1943–84.Google Scholar
Kritzer, Herbert M. 2004. Risks, Reputations, and Rewards: Contingency Fee Legal Practice in the United States. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landsman, Stephan. 2009. “The Growing Challenge of Pro Se Litigation.” Lewis and Clark Law Review 13:439–60.Google Scholar
LeRoy, Michael H., and Feuille, Peter. 2003. “Judical Enforcement of Predispute Arbitration Agreements: Back to the Future.” Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution 18:249–341.Google Scholar
Long, Justin R. 2009. “Against Certification.” George Washington Law Review 78:114–70.Google Scholar
MacCoun, Robert J. 1999. “Epistemological Dilemmas in the Assessment of Legal Decision Making.” Law and Human Behavior 23 (6): 723–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacCoun, Robert J., Lind, Allan E., Hensler, Deborah R., Bryant, David L., and Ebener, Patricia A.. 1988. Alternative Adjudication: An Evaluation of the New Jersey Automobile Arbitration Program. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.Google Scholar
Martin, Andrew D., and Quinn, Kevin M.. 2002. “Dynamic Ideal Point Estimation via Markov Chain Monte Carlo for the U.S. Supreme Court, 1953–1999.” Political Analysis 10:134–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mashaw, Jerry L. 1974. “The Management Side of Due Process: Some Theoretical and Litigation Notes on the Assurance of Accuracy, Fairness and Timeliness in the Adjudication of Social Welfare Claims.” Cornell Law Review 59:772–824.Google Scholar
McDermott, E. Patrick, and Obar, Ruth. 2004. “‘What’s Going On’ in Mediation: An Empirical Analysis of the Influence of a Mediator’s Style of Party Satisfaction and Monetary Benefit.” Harvard Negotiation Law Review 9:75–114.Google Scholar
Melnick, R. Shep. 1994. Between the Lines: Interpreting Welfare Rights. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Melnick, R. Shep. 2005. “From Tax-and-Spend to Mandate-and-Sue: Liberalism after the Great Society.” In The Great Society and the High Tide of Liberalism, ed. Milkis, Sidney M. and Mileur, Jerome M., 387–410. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar
Mongoven, Katherine M. 2005. “Impact of Contingency Fee Agreements on ‘Reasonable’ Attorney Fees Awarded Pursuant to Wisconsin Fee-Shifting Statutes.” Marquette Law Review 88:1013–30.Google Scholar
Moyer, Laura P., and Tankersley, Holley. 2012. “Judicial Innovation and Sexual Harassment Doctrine in the U.S. Court of Appeals.” Political Research Quarterly 65:784–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, Colleen P. 1995. “Determining Compensation: The Tension between Legislative Power and Jury Authority.” Texas Law Review 74:345–410.Google Scholar
Nielsen, Laura Beth, Nelson, Robert, and Lancaster, Ryon. 2010. “Individual Justice or Collective Legal Mobilization? Employment Discrimination Litigation in the Post Civil Rights United States.” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 7:175–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pardo, Rafael I. 2009. “An Empirical Examination of Access to Chapter 7 Relief by Pro Se Debtors.” Emory Bankruptcy Development Journal 26:6–32.Google Scholar
Pattanayak, Cassandra Wolos, Greiner, D. James, and Hennessy, Jonathan. 2013. “The Limits of Unbundled Legal Assistance: A Randomized Study in a Massachusetts District Court and Prospects for the Future.” Harvard Law Review 126:901–89.Google Scholar
Polinsky, A. Mitchell, and Shavell, Steven. 1998. “Punitive Damages: An Economic Analysis.” Harvard Law Review 111 (4): 869–962.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Posner, Richard A. 1973. “An Economic Approach to Legal Procedure and Judicial Administration.” Journal of Legal Studies 2:399–458.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Priest, George L., and Klein, Benjamin. 1984. “The Selection of Disputes for Litigation.” Journal of Legal Studies 13 (1): 1–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robbennolt, Jennifer K. 2005. “Evaluating Juries by Comparison to Judges: A Benchmark for Judging?” Florida State University Law Review 32:469–509.Google Scholar
Rosenbloom, Jonathan D. 2002. “Exploring Methods to Improve Management and Fairness in Pro Se Cases: A Study of the Pro Se Docket in the Southern District of New York.” Fordham Urban Law Journal 30:305–81.Google Scholar
Schwab, Steward, and Eisenberg, Theodore. 1988. “Explaining Constitutional Tort Litigation: The Influence of the Attorney Fees Statute and the Government as Defendant.” Cornell Law Review 73:719–84.Google Scholar
Segal, Jeffrey A., and Cover, Albert. 1989. “Ideological Values and the Votes of U.S. Supreme Court Justices.” American Political Science Review 83:557–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Segal, Jeffrey A., and Spaeth, Harold J.. 2002. The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seron, Carroll, Frankel, Martin, Van Ryzin, Gregg, and Kovath, Jean. 2001. “The Impact of Legal Counsel on Outcomes for Poor Tenants in New York City’s Housing Court: Results of a Randomized Experiment.” Law and Society Review 35:419–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shavell, Steven. 1982. “Suit, Settlement, and Trial: A Theoretical Analysis under Alternative Methods for the Allocation of Legal Costs.” Journal of Legal Studies 11:55–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sunstein, Cass R., Hastie, Reid, Payne, John W., Schkade, David A., and Viscusi, W. Vip. 2002. Punitive Damages: How Juries Decide. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sunstein, Cass R., Schkade, David, and Ellman, Lisa M.. 2006. Are Judges Political? An Empirical Analysis of the Federal Judiciary. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Taylor, Christopher. 2009. “Halting the Charge: Overcoming Problems with the Texas Workforce Commission Civil Rights Division and Its Interplay with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.” Texas Tech Administrative Law Journal 11:139–60.Google Scholar
Taylor, Kelli D. 1994. “The Civil Rights Act of 1991 and Retroactivity: Do Landgraf v. USI Film Products and Rivers v. Roadway Express, Inc. Signify a New Era of Restrictive Employment Discrimination Cases?” American Journal of Trial Advocacy 17:773–95.Google Scholar
Thompson, Timothy D. 2010. “Non-prisoner Pro Se Litigation in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky: Analyzing 2004 and 2007 Cases from Filing to Termination.” Kentucky Law Journal 99:601–35.Google Scholar
Viscusi, W. Kip. 1991. Reforming Products Liability. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Wawro, Gregory J., and Katznelson, Ira. 2014. “Designing Historical Social Scientific Inquiry: How Parameter Heterogeneity Can Bridge the Methodological Divide between Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches.” American Journal of Political Science 58:526–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zemans, Frances Kahn. 1984. “Fee Shifting and the Implementation of Public Policy.” Law and Contemporary Problems 47 (1): 187–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar