Complex Litigation: Cases and Materials on Litigating for Social Change

by Kevin R. Johnson, Catherine A. Rogers, John Valery White

This complex litigation casebook focuses on complex cases brought by lawyers seeking to promote social reform. A significant portion of the book is devoted to so-called impact class actions, which are designed to have an "impact" and bring forth social change. At the same time, this casebook will also cover the more traditional topics found in other complex litigation casebooks, particularly the mass tort class action. Cases seeking to promote social change often have taken complex forms. Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) as well as its precursors, for example, relied on the class action device in an attempt to desegregate the public schools and, more generally, to dismantle Jim Crow in the United States. Advocates for years have brought civil rights, employment discrimination, prison reform, securities fraud, public benefits, housing, environmental, immigration, and other class actions in efforts to reform public institutions and bring forth changes in policies and practices. Class action litigation seeks to transform the tobacco industry, as well as address the epidemic of tobacco-related disease in the United States.

948 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Kevin R. Johnson is Dean, Mabie-Apallas Professor of Public Interest Law, and Professor of Chicana/o Studies. He previously served as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs.

Dean Johnson has published extensively on immigration law and policy, racial identity, and civil rights. Published in 1999, his book How Did You Get to Be Mexican? A White/Brown Man's Search for Identity was nominated for the 2000 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. Opening the Floodgates: Why America Needs to Rethink its Borders and Immigration Laws (2007), one of his most recent books, has influenced the national debate over immigration reform.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, where he served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review, Dean Johnson earned an A.B. in economics from UC Berkeley. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and worked as an attorney at the international law firm of Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe. Dean Johnson has served on the board of directors of Legal Services of Northern California since 1996; after serving as Vice President, he currently is President of the board of directors. In 2006, he was elected to the board of directors of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the leading Mexican-American civil rights organization in the United States. He served on the MALDEF board until 2011.

Dean Johnson joined the UC Davis law faculty in 1989 and was named Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in 1998 and Dean in 2008. He has taught a wide array of classes, including immigration law, civil procedure, complex litigation, Latinos and Latinas and the law, refugee law, and Critical Race Theory. In 1993, he was the recipient of the law school's Distinguished Teaching Award.

A regular participant in national and international conferences, Dean Johnson has also held many leadership positions in the Association of American Law Schools and is the recipient of many honors and awards. The Minority Groups Section of the Association of American Law Schools honored him with the Clyde Ferguson Award in 2004. In 2006, the Hispanic National Bar Association named him the Law Professor of the Year. He was named the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies 2008 Scholar of the Year. In 2003, Dean Johnson was elected to the American Law Institute.

~http://www.law.ucdavis.edu/faculty/Jo...