The Failed Superiority Experiment

Federal law requires a class action be "supcrior to alternative methods for fairly and efficiently adjudicating the controversy." This superiority requirement has gone unstudied, despite existing for half a century. Thia Article undertakes a comprehensive review of the superiority case law. It reveals a jurisprudence riddled with inconsistency as courts adopt diametrically opposed interpretations of the requirement. Originally crafted to encourage predictable, consistent class action decisions, superiority has mutated over the years into a dangerous wild card-subjectively used to stymie aggregate litigation.

The solution is not adding a new requirement to the already onerous rules for class certification. Instead, judges should rely on existing yet currently underutilized case management tools and abandon the failed superiority experiment.