The Even More Conservative Case for Class Actions?

For the Balkinization symposium on Diego Zambrano, How Americans Enforce the Law (Stanford University Press, 2026).Brian T. Fitzpatrick How can the author of The Conservative Case for Class Actions say a bad word about a book that argues that private enforcement of the law is a vivid example of American exceptionalism? I can’t. We conservatives are a patriotic lot; we shamelessly believe that America is mostly better than the rest of the world. In my view, this includes even our embrace of private enforcement of the law. As I wrote in a recent amicus brief I filed in the U.S. Supreme Court: [P]rivate enforcement of the law is one of the things that makes the United States different—and better—than the other developed economies around the world. They rely on government to do everything for them. We don’t—and our markets are more nimble, innovative, and honest because of it. We get a bad rap for our litigiousness in this country. But it is merely the worst way to police the…