ABSTRACT
State courts across the country are being overrun by assembly line claimants executing collection judgments against unrepresented defendants who, for the most part, have neither the incentive nor the wherewithal to even enter an appearance. These defendants, quite simply, are being railroaded through a legal system characterized by an ever-diminishing pretense of adjudication. The key mechanism is what we term ‘asymmetric aggregation’, through which debt collection firms generate efficiencies of scale across mass filings exclusively on one side of the ‘v’. We discuss, in turn, three categories of potential reforms: expanding the pool of representation, reimagining adjudication in consumer cases, and directly regulating debt collection. Ultimately, we suggest the need for federal regulatory intervention, including a licensing regime through an agency such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Issacharoff, Samuel and Martin, Beverly, Putting Railroad Justice Back on Track (January 15, 2025), New York University School of Law, Public Law Research Paper Forthcoming; in Rethinking The Lawyer’s Monopoly: Access To Justice And The Future Of Legal Services (2025, Cambridge University Press) (David Engstrom and Nora Engstrom, eds).
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