Collective Actions: Enhancing Access to Justice and Reconciling Multilayer Interests?

This volume of essays draws together research on different types of collective actions: group actions, representative actions, test case procedures, derivative actions and class actions. The main focus is on how these actions can enhance access to justice and on how to balance the interests of private actors in protecting their rights with the interests of society as a whole. Rather than focusing on collective actions only as a procedural device per se, the contributors to this book also examine how these mechanisms relate to their broader social context. Bringing together a broad range of scholarship from the areas of competition, consumer, environmental, company and securities law, the book includes contributions from Asian, European and North American scholars and therefore expands the scope of the traditional European and/or American debate.

Table of Contents:
1. Access to justice and collective actions: Florence and beyond Stefan Wrbka, Steven Van Uytsel and Mathias M. Siems; Part I. Setting the Stage: 2. European consumer protection law: quo vadis? Thoughts on the compensatory collective redress debate Stefan Wrbka; 3. Collective actions in a competition law context - reconciling multilayer interests to enhance access to justice? Steven Van Uytsel; 4. Private enforcement of directors' duties: derivative actions as a global phenomenon Mathias M. Siems; Part II. Cross-Continental Perspectives on Collective Redress: 5. From peasant to shareholder: divergent paths of group litigation in Tokugawa Japan and England Sean McGinty; 6. Reconciling multilayer interests in environmental law: access to justice in environmental matters in the European Union and the United States Monika Hinteregger; Part III. A Need to Enhance Collective Redress in Japan?: 7. Recent problems of group rights protection for consumers in Japan Kunihiro Nakata; 8. Can collective action be a solution to improve access to justice in Japan? Examination of measures to enhance the private enforcement of competition law in Japan Akinori Uesugi; Part IV. Collective Enforcement of Company and Securities Law: 9. Does more litigation mean more justice for shareholders? The case of derivative actions in Vietnam Quynh Thuy Quach; 10. The United States Supreme Court and implied private cause of actions under Sec. Rule 10b-5: the politics of class actions Arthur R. Pinto; Part V. Indirect Purchasers and Collective Redress: 11. Indirect purchaser suits after the class action fairness act: reconciling multilayer interests in antitrust litigation William Page; 12. Collective actions by indirect purchasers: lessons from the Japanese Oil Cartel cases Simon Vande Walle; Part VI. Recent Developments of and Future Perspectives on Collective Redress: 13. Collective enforcement: European prospects in light of Swedish experience Annina H. Persson; 14. Transnational class settlements: lessons from Converium Benoît Allemeersch; 15. The impetus for class actions reform in England arising from the competition law sector Rachael Mulheron.

About the Author :
Stefan Wrbka is an Associate Professor of Consumer Law at the Graduate School of Law and International Education Center, Kyushu University. Steven Van Uytsel is an Associate Professor of Competition Law and Natural Resources Law at the Faculty of Law, Kyushu University. Mathias M. Siems is a Professor of Commercial Law at Durham University.