The Fragility of Our Private Enforcement Republic

For the Balkinization symposium on Diego Zambrano, How Americans Enforce the Law (Stanford University Press, 2026).Myriam Gilles IntroductionWhen the German car manufacturer Volkswagen finally confessed in 2015 to having installed “defeat devices” in millions of cars in order to cheat emissions tests, “Diesel-gate” became a staple of corporate-misconduct lore. But Diego Zambrano’s book invites us to look beyond the scandal itself to the very different ways in which two systems of law responded to it. In the United States, Volkswagen’s admission triggered an avalanche of lawsuits: within months, more than 50 consumer class actions were filed alongside dozens of individual lawsuits, and the Attorney Generals of more than 40 states commenced enforcement actions. Consolidated before Judges Charles Breyer in a sprawling multidistrict litigation (MDL), these cases eventually produced a $11.2 billion settlement offering consumer buybacks, per-vehicle compensation, and billions for…