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“ Helpless †Groups
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | McKenzie, Troy A. |
| Copyright Year | 2013 |
| Abstract | This Essay considers the idea of the “helpless” group—that is, the group comprising individuals who are thought to be incapable of protecting their own interests. That idea plays a particularly important role in the history of the modern class action, which has been justified as a device providing redress for “small claims held by small people.”2 The helpless group is at once hero and victim. The group serves as champion of the law by seeking to vindicate its rights.3 At the same time, the group may be preyed upon by the party opposing it and, potentially, by its own counsel. Indeed, courts, whether in the class action4 or in the new world of nonclass aggregate litigation,5 are called upon to give special protection to the helpless group for that reason. But the rhetoric of helplessness can be muddled and contradictory. It is muddled because it collapses a number of different concepts that should be explored separately. Sometimes, the image of the helpless group is invoked when discussing a group of individuals who are not helpless in the ordinary sense of the word. They may be fully capable of participating in the litigation but are rationally indifferent to it—either because they hold negative value claims or because the group’s claims are, for idiosyncratic reasons, ones that individual group members may not wish to pursue. At other times, the image of the helpless group is invoked to justify searching judicial oversight of lawyers. The rhetoric of helplessness under those |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://fordhamlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/assets/pdfs/Vol_81/McKenzie_May.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4906&context=flr |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4906&context=flr&httpsredir=1&referer= |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
