Institute for Research on Labor and Employment

In this contribution to the Symposium honoring Stephen Yeazell, the author explores the interaction between group litigation and social context in the contemporary setting. She traces recent developments in the law of class action waivers coupled with mandatory individual arbitration clauses in consumer and employment contracts. She shows how the Supreme Court’s decisions in AT&T v. Concepcion and American Express v. Italian Colors enable large corporations that impose class action bans on consumers and employees to achieve de facto immunity from decades of hard-won protective legislation. She concludes that Yeazell’s insight—that the availability of group litigation is intricately linked with a society’s social arrangements—is as truetoday as it was when he first examined the issue in the 1970s.