Opinion ID: 1885183
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 14

Heading: Characteristics of the Traditional Lawsuit as opposed to an Action Seeking a Structural Injunction

Text: Western law, particularly constitutional law, builds upon a distinction between law and politics. This is the fundamental separation between the political (i.e., legislative and executive) and judicial branches of government. Political bodies render decisions on policy matters but as to the manner of reaching those decisions, there is a fundamental difference between the judicial process and the political process. Judicial bodies are set up to operate very differently from legislative and executive bodies with respect to the rendering of decisions or judgments. Professor Chayes provides a very useful summary of what he calls the defining features of a traditional lawsuit: (1) The lawsuit is bipolar. Litigation is organized as a contest between two individuals or at least two unitary interests, diametrically opposed, to be decided on a winner-takes-all basis. (2) Litigation is retrospective. The controversy is about an identified set of completed events: whether they occurred, and if so, with what consequences for the legal relations of the parties. (3) Right and remedy are interdependent. The scope of the relief is derived more or less logically from the substantive violation under the general theory that the plaintiff will get compensation measured by the harm caused by the defendant's breach of dutyin contract by giving plaintiff the money he would have had absent the breach; in tort, by paying the value of the damage caused. (4) The lawsuit is a self-contained episode. The impact of the judgment is confined to the parties. If plaintiff prevails there is a simple compensatory transfer, usually of money, but occasionally the return of a thing or the performance of a definite act. If defendant prevails, a loss lies where it has fallen. In either case, entry of judgment ends the court's involvement. Chayes at 1282-83 (footnotes omitted). Comparing the traditional lawsuit to the public-interest lawsuit, Chayes notes that the public-interest lawsuit, which represents a court's attempting to act improperly in the stead of a Legislature, differs at every point from the traditional lawsuit. The party structure is sprawling and amorphous, subject to change over the course of the litigation.... The judge is the dominant figure in organizing and guiding the case, and he draws for support not only on the parties and their counsel, but on a wide range of outsidersmasters, experts, and oversight personnel. Most important, the trial judge has increasingly become the creator and manager of complex forms of ongoing relief, which have widespread effects on persons not before the court and require the judge's continuing involvement in administration and implementation. Chayes at 1284. The litigation before us does not focus on a particular wrong done to some plaintiff or group of plaintiffs but on the application of regulatory policy to the activities of a different branch of civil government. In this type of case, the court does not apply the law to provide a remedy for a past wrong but establishes a regime ordering the manner of the future interaction of the parties and subjects the parties to continuing judicial oversight. The traditional model of adjudication was primarily concerned with assessing the consequences for the parties of specific past instances of conduct. This retrospective orientation is often inapposite in public law litigation, where the lawsuit generally seeks to enjoin future or threatened action, or to modify a course of conduct presently in train or a condition presently existing. Chayes at 1296 (footnotes omitted). In the remedial phases of public law litigation, factfinding is even more clearly prospective. As emphasized above, the contours of relief are not derived logically from the substantive wrong adjudged, as in the traditional model. The elaboration of a decree is largely a discretionary process within which the trial judge is called upon to assess and appraise the consequences of alternative programs that might correct the substantive fault. In both the liability and remedial phases, the relevant inquiry is largely the same: How can the policies of a public law best be served in a concrete case? In public law litigation, then, factfinding is principally concerned with `legislative' rather than `adjudicative' fact. And `fact evaluation' is perhaps a more accurate term than `factfinding.' The whole process begins to look like the traditional description of legislation: Attention is drawn to a `mischief,' existing or threatened, and the activity of the parties and court is directed to the development of on-going measures designed to cure that mischief. Indeed, if, as is often the case, the decree sets up an affirmative regime governing the activities in controversy for the indefinite future and having binding force for persons within its ambit, then it is not very much of a stretch to see it as, pro tanto, a legislative act. Chayes at 1296-97 (footnotes omitted). [T]he prospective character of the relief introduces large elements of contingency and prediction into the proceedings. Instead of a dispute retrospectively oriented toward the consequences of a closed set of events, the court has a controversy about future probabilities. Equitable doctrine, naturally enough, given the intrusiveness of the injunction and the contingent nature of the harm, calls for a balancing of the interests of the parties. Chayes at 1292-93. In addition, the remedy is independent of the right violated and is usually structural in nature. The centerpiece of the emerging public law model is the decree. It differs in almost every relevant characteristic from relief in the traditional model of adjudication, not the least in that it is the centerpiece. The decree seeks to adjust future behavior, not to compensate for past wrong. It is deliberately fashioned rather than logically deduced from the nature of the legal harm suffered. It provides for a complex on-going regime of performance rather than a simple, one-shot, one-way transfer. Finally, it prolongs and deepens, rather than terminates, the court's involvement with the dispute. Chayes at 1298. At this point, right and remedy are pretty thoroughly disconnected. The form of relief does not flow ineluctably from the liability determination, but is fashioned ad hoc. In the process, moreover, right and remedy have been to some extent transmuted. The liability determination is not simply a pronouncement of the legal consequences of past events, but to some extent a prediction of what is likely to be in the future. And relief is not a terminal, compensatory transfer, but an effort to devise a program to contain future consequences in a way that accommodates the range of interests involved. Chayes at 1293-94 (footnotes omitted). Moreover, in such cases, the lawsuit is ongoing. Once the ongoing remedial regime is established, the same procedure may be repeated in connection with the implementation and enforcement of the decree. Compliance problems may be brought to the court for resolution and, if necessary, further remediation. Again, the court will often have no alternative but to resort to its own sources of information and evaluation. I suggested above that a judicial decree establishing an ongoing affirmative regime of conduct is pro tanto a legislative act. But in actively shaping and monitoring the decree, mediating between the parties, developing his own sources of expertise and information, the trial judge has passed beyond even the role of legislator and has become a policy planner and manager. Chayes at 1301-02 (footnotes omitted).