Collective Legal Mobilisation: Exploring Class Actions in Sweden and Canada

ABSTRACT

Although a wide range of activities constitute legal mobilisation, a long-standing area of neglect in this research tradition has concerned the role of collective or aggregative mechanisms such as class actions, particularly outside the American context. This essay situates class actions in the legal mobilisation research tradition, drawing on insights from the two comparator regimes of Canada and Sweden, and offers a critical exploratory account of their role in facilitating collective legal mobilisation. The first section establishes the theoretical foundations for incorporating class actions into the tradition, exploring the main approaches to conceptualising legal mobilisation and identifying ways in which this incorporation expands and contributes to conventional approaches. The second section undertakes a comparative analysis with a focus on key design points and legal opportunity structures that promote or hinder collective legal mobilisation. Finally, the third section explores new and future trajectories of research, with a focus on benefits of comparative sociology of law and a critical orientation towards the promises and perils of collective legal mobilisation.

KEYWORDS:

• Collective legal mobilisation
• class action
• Sweden
• Canada
• legal contestation

Notes

1 Michael McCann, ‘Litigation and Legal Mobilization’ in Gregory Caldeira, R Daniel Kelemen and Keith E Whittington (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics (Oxford University Press 2008) 535.

2 Ibid.

3 See e.g. Jerome E Carlin, Jan Howard and Sheldon L Messinger, Civil Justice and the Poor: Issues for Sociological Research (Russell Sage Foundation 1967); F Levine and E Preston, ‘Community Reorientation Among Low Income Groups’ [1970] Wisconsin Law Review 80; Donald Black, ‘The Mobilization of Law’ (1973) 2 Journal of Legal Studies 125; Stuart A Scheingold, The Politics of Rights: Lawyers, Public Policy, and Social Change (Yale University Press 1974); Joel F Handler, Lawyers and the Pursuit of Legal Rights (Academic Press 1978); Linda Medcalf, Law and Identity: Lawyers, Native Americans, and Legal Practice (Sage 1978).

4 McCann (n 1) 536.

5 This section owes a particular debt to the excellent conceptual analysis recently offered in Emilio Lehoucq and Whitney Taylor, ‘Conceptualizing Legal Mobilization: How Should We Understand the Deployment of Legal Strategies?’ (2020) 45 (1) Law & Social Inquiry 166.

6 Frances K Zemans, ‘Legal Mobilization: The Neglected Role of Law in the Political System’ (1983) 77 (3) American Political Science Review 690, 700.

7 Richard Lempert, ‘Mobilizing Private Law: An Introductory Essay’ (1976) 11 (2) Law & Society Review 173, 173; Lehoucq and Taylor (n 5) 166, 170.

8 Robert Cover, ‘Nomos and Narrative’ (1983–84) 97 (4) Harvard Law Review 4; Robert Cover, ‘Violence and the Word’ (1986) 95 (8) The Yale Law Journal 1601.

9 Eugen Ehrlich, Fundamental Principles of the Sociology of Law (Routledge 2017).

10 Michael McCann and George Lovell, Union by Law: Filipino American Labor Activists, Rights Radicalism, and Racial Capitalism (University of Chicago Press 2020).

11 This forms part of a broader project on legal mobilisation theory that I am currently undertaking.

12 Charles Tilly and Sidney Tarrow, Contentious Politics (Oxford University Press 2015).

13 Lehoucq and Taylor (n 5) 166, 171. Julieta Lemaitre and Kristin Sandvik , ‘Shifting Frames, Vanishing Resources, and Dangerous Political Opportunities: Legal Mobilisation among Displaced Women in Columbia’ (2015) 49 (1) Law & Society Review 5, 8.

14 Charles R Epp, The Rights Revolution: Lawyers, Activists, and Supreme Courts in Comparative Perspective (University of Chicago Press 1998) 18.

15 Lehoucq and Taylor (n 5) 166, 185.

16 This leads to what Lehoucq and Taylor (n 5) 173 describe as a ‘ …  decoupling of conceptualization and operationalization’.

17 Ibid. 174.

18 Ibid. 174–75.

19 The parameters of this conceptualisation are informed by the categorisations offered by Lehoucq and Taylor (n 5) 172.

20 Ibid. 174. See also Michael McCann, Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization (University of Chicago Press 1994).

21 This does not imply that class actions are strictly used in such ways as they have likewise been deployed in disputes involving relatively powerful actors on both sides of the aisle (re. plaintiffs and defendants).

22 These are typically high-profile cases rather than the run-of-the-mill cases which, at least in Canada, tend to focus on securities and shareholder disputes.

23 For example, the Group Litigation Order in England and Wales. Relatedly, the poor record of the GLO in that jurisdiction reflects the need for introducing a generic opt-out class action that can better facilitate collective legal mobilisation and advance collective claims-making: see Michael Molavi, Collective Access to Justice: Assessing the Potential of Class Actions in England and Wales (Policy Press 2021).

24 See e.g. Paul Burstein, ‘Legal Mobilization as a Social Movement Tactic: The Struggle for Equal Employment Opportunity’ (1991) 96 (5) American Journal of Sociology 1201.

25 Frances K Zemans, ‘Framework for Analysis of Legal Mobilization: A Decision-Making Model’ (1982) 7 (4) American Bar Foundation Research Journal 989, 1065.

26 For a promising recent special journal issue on the topic in South African context, see J. Handmaker, ‘Introduction to Special Issue: Class Action Litigation in South Africa’ (2021) 37 (1) South African Journal on Human Rights 1.

27 Michael Molavi, ‘Access to Justice and the Limits of Environmental Class Actions in Ontario’ (2020) 35 (3) Canadian Journal of Law and Society/Law Revue Canadienne Droit et Société 391.

28 The recruitment of ideal candidates for test cases and strategic litigation is a long-standing practice in legal mobilisation campaigns.

29 William LF Felstiner, Richard L Abel and Austin Sarat, ‘The Emergence and Transformation of Disputes: Naming, Blaming, Claiming … ’ (1080–81) 15 (3/4) Law & Society Review 631.

30 Ole Hammerslev and Annette Olesen have proposed an innovative new model based on an impressive meta-ethnography of research that deploys the standard model, finding instead of progressing linearly in the transformation, there is rather a repeat process of re-naming, re-blaming, and re-claiming: see A Olesen and O Hammerslev, ‘The Dynamic and Iterative Pre-Dispute Phases: The Transformation from a Justiciable Problem into a Legal Dispute’ Vol 50, Issue 1 (2023) 120–138. See also Annette Olesen and Ole Hammerslev, ‘Bringing Sociology of Law Back into Pierre Bourdieu’s Sociology: Elements of Bourdieu’s Sociology of Law and Dispute Transformation’ (2022) Vol 32, Issue 2 (2023) 177–196 1.

31 See e.g. Richard E Miller and Austin Sarat, ‘Grievances, Claims, and Disputes: Assessing the Adversary Culture’ (1980–81) 15 Law & Society Review 525; Martin Shapiro, Courts: A Comparative and Political Analysis (University of Chicago Press 1981); J Brigham, The Constitution of Interests: Beyond the Politics of Rights (New York University Press 1996); Calvin Morrill, Lauren B Edelman, Karolyn Tyson and Richard Arum, ‘Legal Mobilization in Schools: The Paradox of Rights and Race Among Youth’ (2010) 44 (3/4) Law & Society Review 651; David McElhattan, Laura Beth Nielsen and Jill D Weinberg, ‘Race and Determinations of Discrimination: Vigilance, Cynicism, Skepticism, and Attitudes about Legal Mobilization in Employment Civil Rights’ (2017) 51 (3) Law & Society Review 669.

32 See e.g. William Haltom and Michael McCann, Distorting the Law: Politics, Media, and the Litigation Crisis (University of Chicago Press 2009); David M Engel, The Myth of the Litigious Society: Why We Don’t Sue (University of Chicago Press 2016).

33 This dynamic is typically at play in common law regimes such as Australia, Canada, and the United States.

34 McCann and Lovell (n 10) 319.

35 John Coffee Jr, Entrepreneurial Litigation: Its Rise, Fall, and Future (Harvard University Press 2015).

36 Carl Cheng, ‘Important Rights and the Private Attorney General Doctrine’ (1985) 73 (6) California Law Review 1929; Jeremy A Rabkin, ‘The Secret Life of the Private Attorney General’ (1988) 61 (1) Law and Contemporary Problems 179; David F Engstrom, ‘Harnessing the Private Attorney General: Evidence from Qui Tam Litigation’ (2012) 112 (6) Columbia Law Review 1244.

37 See e.g. Chris Hilson, ‘New Social Movements: The Role of Legal Opportunity’ (2002) 9 Journal of European Public Policy 238; Ellen Ann Andersen, Out of the Closets and Into the Courts: Legal Opportunity Structure and Gay Rights Litigation (University of Michigan Press 2005); Bruce M Wilson and Juan Carlos Rodríguez Cordero, ‘Legal Opportunity Structures and Social Movements: The Effects of Institutional Change on Costa Rican Politics’ (2006) 39 Comparative Political Studies 325; Rachel A Cichowski, The European Court and Civil Society: Litigation, Mobilization and Governance (Cambridge University Press 2007); Rhonda Evans Case and Terri E Givens, ‘Re-Engineering Legal Opportunity Structures in the European Union? The Starting Line Group and the Politics of the Racial Equality Directive’ (2010) 48 Journal of Common Market Studies 221.

38 McCann and Lovell (n 10) 395.

39 Molavi, Collective Access to Justice (n 23).

40 Ibid.

41 Wendy Brown, ‘Law and Legal Reason’ in Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (Zone Books 2015): 152–54.

42 I owe this temporalisation of class action regimes into discrete generations to Rachael Mulheron: see Rachael Mulheron, ‘The United Kingdom’s New Opt-Out Class Action’ (2017) 37 (4) Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 814.

43 Class Proceedings Act, SO 1992, c 6.

44 Class Proceedings Act, RSBC 1996, c 50.

45 Class Actions Act, SNL 2001, c C- 18.1 and Class Actions Act, SS 2001, c C- 12.01 respectively.

46 Class Proceedings Act, CCSM, c C130.

47 Class Proceedings Act, SA 2003, c C- 16.5.

48 Class Proceedings Act, SNB 2006, c C- 5.15.

49 Class Proceedings Act, SNS 2007, c 28. I have written at length about this legislative history and the variability across these provincial regimes elsewhere. See e.g. Molavi, Collective Access to Justice (n 23).

50 The leading case of which was Cloud v Can (AG), (2004) 192 OAC 239 (CA).

51 The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, Part 1 – Origins to 1939, Vol. I (McGill-Queen’s University Press 2015); The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, Part 2–1939 to 2000 (McGill-Queen’s University Press 2015).

52 Ibid.

53 The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Canada’s Residential Schools: The Legacy (McGill-Queen’s University Press 2015).

54 The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Canada’s Residential Schools: Missing Children and Unmarked Burials (McGill-Queen’s University Press 2016).

55 Ibid.

56 The 94 Calls to Action identified in the Final Report by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission have been unevenly adopted (to put it mildly). These span the breadth of the continuum for addressing the colonial legacy of the Residential Schools, including on child welfare, education, language and culture, health, justice, equity for Indigenous peoples in the legal system, adoption of international declarations on the rights of Indigenous peoples, professional development and training for public servants, youth programmes, museums and archives, missing children and burial information, and reconciliation initiatives involving sports, media, and business, among others: The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (n 53) 277.

57 It is important to note, too, that the politics of recognition implicit in many of the processes associated with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been criticised as reinscribing the power of colonial agents over colonised subjects and proffering the potential of reconciliation based on acknowledgement: see e.g. Glen Sean Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (University of Minnesota Press 2014). Coulthard’s critique is inspired by the Franz Fanon’s classic 1952 treatise: Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (Penguin 2021).

58 Nor should the availability of such a mechanism, the deployment of which is tantamount to more effective participation in settler-colonial state institutions, be viewed as a substitute for direct action and protests that challenge the very legitimacy of such institutions – as exemplified by ongoing Indigenous resistance movements, such as Idle No More and Red Power, with their respective decolonisation objectives.

59 Trevor CW Farrow, ‘Residential Schools Litigation and the Legal Profession’ (2014) 64 (4) University of Toronto Law Journal 596, 610.

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid. 611–17.

62 David Macdonald, ‘Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission: Assessing Context, Process, and Critiques’ (2020) 29 (1) Griffith Law Review 150, 154, 156.; see also Jennifer Henderson, ‘Residential Schools and Opinion-Making in the Era of Traumatized Subjects and Taxpayer-Citizens’ (2015) 49 (1) Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d’études canadiennes 5; Matt James, ‘The Structural Injustice Turn, the Historical Justice Dilemma and Assigning Responsibility with the Canadian TRC Report’ (2021) 54 (2) Canadian Journal of Political Science 374.

63 See n 35.

64 Myriam Gilles and Gary B Friedman, ‘Exploding the Class Action Agency Costs Myth: The Social Utility of Entrepreneurial Lawyers’ (2006) 155 (1) University of Pennsylvania Law Review 103.

65 Macdonald (n 64) 154–55.

66 Jasminka Kalajdzic, Class Actions in Canada: The Promise and Reality of Access to Justice (University of British Columbia Press 2018); Jasminka Kalajdzic and Catherine Piché, Class Actions: Objectives, Experiences and Reforms – Final Report (Law Commission of Ontario 2019).

67 Baxter v Canada (Attorney General) (2006), 83 OR (3d); see also Jim Miller, ‘Reconciliation with Residential School Survivors: A Progress Report’ in Jerry White, Dan Beavon and Julie Peters (eds), Aboriginal Policy Research: Voting, Governance, and Research Methodology (Thompson Education 2010).

68 Robert Gaudet, ‘Lessons Learned From Swedish, Danish, Dutch, and Norwegian Class Actions: Comments on the White Paper on Damages Actions for Breach of the EC Antitrust Rules COM (2008) 165 Final’ 14 July 2008 <https://ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/actionsdamages/white_paper_comments/gaudet_en.pdf>.

69 I have recently made this argument in Michael Molavi, ‘Encountering Class Actions in Swedish Law and Society’ (2022) 2 (2) Mass Claims: An International Journal with a European Focus 19.

70 Lag (2002:599) om grupprättegång <www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-lagar/dokument/svensk-forfattningssamling/lag-2002599-omgrupprattegang_sfs-2002-599> (in Swedish).

71 There is no comprehensive database of class actions in Sweden. This statistic is based on the admirable efforts of Anna Wallerman Ghavanini to collect data from the National Courts Administration Authority and district courts: see Anna Wallerman Ghavanini, ‘United We Stand, Divided We Sue: Collective Access to Court for Labour and Social Security Claims in Sweden’ (2021) 12 (4) European Labour Law Journal 498.

72 Laura Carlson, ‘Access to Justice in Sweden from a Comparative Perspective’ in Barbara Havelková and Mathias Möschel (eds), Anti-Discrimination Law in Civil Law Jurisdictions (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2019) 118–35.

73 Rachael Mulheron, Class Actions and Government (Cambridge University Press 2020).

74 Molavi, Collective Access to Justice (n 23) 119–20; William Samuelson and Richard Zeckhauser, ‘Status Quo Bias in Decision-Making’ (1988) 1 Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 7; Daniel Kahneman, Jack L Knetsch and Richard H Thaler, ‘Anomalies: The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias’ (1991) 5 (1) Journal of Economic Perspectives 193.

75 See e.g. Theodore Eisenberg and Geoffrey Miller, ‘The Role of Opt-Outs and Objectors in Class Action Litigation: Theoretical and Empirical Issues’ (2005) 57 (5) Vanderbilt Law Review 1529;

76 I have analysed the politics of class action reform processes elsewhere and will not repeat it here: Molavi, Collective Access to Justice (n 23).

77 In contrast to Canada, research on Indigenous legal mobilisation in Sweden is relatively sparse. One notable ongoing research project, ‘Litigating land rights in Sápmi: Indigenous legal mobilization in Finland, Norway and Sweden’ by Johan Karlsson Schaffer, Peter Johansson and Camille Parguel, does appear to be contributing towards filling this knowledge gap.

78 See e.g. Per Henrik Lindblom, ‘Sweden’ (2009) 622 The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 231.

79 There is a possibility for somewhat cumbersome ‘risk agreements’, but these are poor substitutes for traditional contingency fees: Lindblom (n 78) 236.

80 In the consumer context, the European Union recently introduced a Directive on representative actions for the protection of the collective interests of consumers on 25 November 2020 <https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32020L1828>.

81 Jürgen G Backhaus, Alberto Cassone and Giovanni B Ramello (eds), The Law and Economics of Class Actions in Europe: Lessons from America (Edward Elgar 2012).

82 Linda S Mullenix, ‘Ending Class Actions as We Know Them: Rethinking the American Class Action’ (2014) 64 (2) Emory Law Journal 402.

83 Brian T Fitzpatrick and Randall S Thomas (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of Class Actions: An International Survey (Cambridge University Press 2021).

84 Such volumes are not without their merits as they do collate and offer useful overviews of regimes. But see e.g. Deborah Hensler, Christopher Hodges and Ianika Tzankova (eds), Class Actions in Context: How Culture, Economics and Politics Shape Collective Litigation (Edward Elgar 2016).

85 I have recently detailed the sound methodological bases for comparative perspectives in class action research: see Michael Molavi, ‘Contra Giving Wealth a ‘monopoly of justice against poverty’: Comparative Insights on Public Class Action Funding’ (2023) 42 (1) Civil Justice Quarterly 93.

86 Michelle A McKinley, Fractional Freedoms: Slavery, Intimacy, and Legal Mobilization in Colonial Lima, 1600–1700 (Cambridge University Press 2016).

87 Whitney Taylor, ‘Ambivalent Legal Mobilization: Perceptions of Justice and the Use of the Tutela in Colombia’ (2018) 52 (2) Law & Society Review 337; Emilio Lehoucq, ‘Legal Threats and the Emergence of Legal Mobilization: Conservative Mobilization in Colombia’ (2020) 46 (2) Law & Social Inquiry 299.

88 Boaventura de Sousa Santos and César A Rodríguez-Garavito (eds), Law and Globalization from Below: Towards a Cosmopolitan Legality (Cambridge University Press 2009); Verónica Michel and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘Human Rights Prosecutions and the Participation Rights of Victims in Latin America’ (2013) 47 (4) Law & Society Review 873.

89 Tamir Moustafa, ‘Law versus the State: The Judicialization of Politics in Egypt’ (2003) 28 (4) Law & Social Inquiry 883.

90 Annette Schramm, Legal Mobilization in Large-Scale Land Deals: Evidence from Sierra Leone and the Philippines (Nomos 2020).

91 Jeff Handmaker and Thandiwe Matthews, ‘Analysing Legal Mobilisation’s Potential to Secure Equal Access to Socioeconomic Justice in South Africa’ (2019) 36 (6) Development Southern Africa 889.

92 Gerald N Rosenberg, Sudhir Krishnaswamy and Shishir Bail (eds), A Qualified Hope: The Indian Supreme Court and Progressive Social Change (Cambridge University Press 2019).

93 Tom Ginsburg and Tamir Moustafa (eds), Rule By Law: The Politics of Courts in Authoritarian Regimes (Cambridge University Press 2012).

94 Kathryn Hendley, ‘Mobilizing Law in Contemporary Russia: The Evolution of Disputes over Home Repair Projects’ (2010) 58 (3) The American Journal of Comparative Law 631; F van der Vet, ‘“When They Come for You”: Legal Mobilization in New Authoritarian Russia’ (2018) 52 (2) Law & Society Review 301.

95 Lynette J Chua, Mobilizing Gay Singapore: Rights and Resistance in an Authoritarian State (Temple University Press 2014).

96 Wai Keung Tam, Legal Mobilization under Authoritarianism: The Case of Post-Colonial Hong Kong (Cambridge University Press 2013).

97 Lynette J Chua and David Gilbert, ‘Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Minorities in Transition: LGBT Rights and Activism in Myanmar’ (2015) 37 91) Human Rights Quarterly 1.

98 Kevin J O'Brien and Lianjiang Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China (Cambridge University Press 2012); Diana Fu, ‘Disguised Collective Action in China’ (2016) 50 (4) Comparative Political Studies 499; Mary E Gallagher, Authoritarian Legality in China: Law, Workers, and the State (Cambridge University Press 2017).

99 These often exhibit forms of methodological nationalism.

100 David Marcus, ‘The History of the Modern Class Action, Part I: Sturm und Drang, 1953–1980’ (2013) 93 (3) Washington University Law Review 587, 592. See also Mullenix (n 84) 406–35.

101 Gerald Rosenberg, The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change? (University of Chicago Press 1991); Epp (n 14).

102 For example, consider the recent US Supreme Court decision attacking reproductive rights: Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization 597 US (2022).

103 McCann and Lovell (n 10) 366.

104 Gunther Teubner (ed), Juridification of Social Spheres: A Comparative Analysis in the Areas of Labor, Corporate, Antitrust and Social Welfare Law (De Gruyter 2012).

105 See e.g. Ran Hirschl, Towards Juristocracy: The Origins and Consequences of the New Constitutionalism (Harvard University Press 2004); F Vibert, The Rise of the Unelected (Cambridge University Press 2007); Richard Ekins, Paul Yowell and NW Barber, Lord Sumption and the Limits of the Law (Bloomsbury 2018); J Sumption, Trials of the State: Law and the Decline of Politics (Profile Books 2019).

106 Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, Law and Disorder in the Postcolony (University of Chicago Press 2006) 27.

107 Ibid.

108 Lucio Colletti, Early Writings Marx (Penguin 1992).

109 EP Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act (Allen Lane 1975).

110 JAG Griffith, The Politics of the Judiciary (Fontana 1977).

111 Franz Neumann, The Democratic and The Authoritarian State: Essays in Political and Legal Theory (The Free Press 1957).

112 Wendy Brown and Janet Halley (eds), Left Legalism/Left Critique (Duke University Press 2002).

113 Ibid.

114 Duncan Kennedy, ‘The Critique of Rights in Critical Legal Studies’ in Wendy Brown and Janet Halley (eds), Left Legalism/Left Critique (Durham: Duke University Press 2002) 178–228.

115 McCann and Lovell (n 10) 366.