TY - JOUR

T1 - The (Un)intended Consequences of Legal Transplants

T2 - Conference in Honor of Deborah Hensler

AU - Kalajdzic, Jasminka

AU - Halfmeier, Axel

AU - Murphy, Bernard

AU - Tzankova, Ianika

AU - Gómez, Manuel A.

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston. Special Issue title: Complex and International Litigation and Empirical Litigation Studies: Festschrift in Honor of Professor Deborah Hensler

PY - 2025

Y1 - 2025

N2 - Deborah R. Hensler has long championed the comparative study of civil procedure in a way that considers the interplay between legal rules, redress mechanisms, legal institutions and the societies where they operate. More importantly, this approach has also revealed the intended and unintended consequences of legal transplantation, and illuminated the difference between the law in the books and the law in action. As Professor Hensler recently and succinctly wrote, “procedures that seem on the surface to be the same or very similar may in practice operate differently as they intersect with other aspects of the litigation regime – rules, cultural expectations, political contexts – in which they are inserted.” In a multi-year book project she led almost a decade ago, Hensler and her colleagues identified the cultural, economic and political forces that impact how a single procedural device – representative litigation – operates in any given jurisdiction. The studies that comprised the project were grounded in empirical data obtained through several research strategies, specially the case study method. National jurisdictions or specific cases within those jurisdictions were used as units of analysis, and as a basis for a broader cross-country comparison that helped identify points of convergence and also key differences.

AB - Deborah R. Hensler has long championed the comparative study of civil procedure in a way that considers the interplay between legal rules, redress mechanisms, legal institutions and the societies where they operate. More importantly, this approach has also revealed the intended and unintended consequences of legal transplantation, and illuminated the difference between the law in the books and the law in action. As Professor Hensler recently and succinctly wrote, “procedures that seem on the surface to be the same or very similar may in practice operate differently as they intersect with other aspects of the litigation regime – rules, cultural expectations, political contexts – in which they are inserted.” In a multi-year book project she led almost a decade ago, Hensler and her colleagues identified the cultural, economic and political forces that impact how a single procedural device – representative litigation – operates in any given jurisdiction. The studies that comprised the project were grounded in empirical data obtained through several research strategies, specially the case study method. National jurisdictions or specific cases within those jurisdictions were used as units of analysis, and as a basis for a broader cross-country comparison that helped identify points of convergence and also key differences.

KW - Law

KW - legal transplants

KW - Deborah R. Hensler

KW - comparative study

KW - collective litigation

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85217688890&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1515/jtl-2025-0003

DO - 10.1515/jtl-2025-0003

M3 - Conference article in journal

VL - 17

SP - 149

EP - 202

JO - Journal of Tort Law

JF - Journal of Tort Law

SN - 1932-9148

IS - 2

Y2 - 20 September 2024 through 20 September 2024

ER -