When a United States senator asked the federal judiciary to look into sealed settlement agreements, the Civil Rules Advisory Committee asked the Federal Judicial Center to undertake a research effort to discover how often settlement agreements are sealed in federal court and under what circumstances. The Center learned that the sealing of settlement agreements in federal court is rare, and typically the only part of the court record kept secret by the sealing of a settlement agreement is the amount of settlement. This article describes how the Center developed its research project to address the senator's concerns.

From 81 Chicago-Kent Law Review, 439-62 (2006).

For the published results of the research project, see Sealed Settlement Agreements in Federal District Courts (2004).

The Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (CAFA) (Pub. L. No. 109-2, 119 Stat. 4 (2005)) expanded the federal courts' diversity of citizenship jurisdiction over class action litigation. Congress's intent was, in part, to shift some class action litigation from the state courts to the federal courts. Passage of the Act sparked concerns about the impact of these additional class actions on the federal courts' rocedures and workload. In light of these concerns, the Judicial Conference's Advisory Committee on Civil Rules (Advisory Committee)1 asked the Federal Judicial Center (FJC) to study the impact of CAFA on the federal courts. This report marks the end of the first phase of the FJC study on the impact of CAFA on the number of class actions initiated in the federal courts. This report presents interim findings on class actions filings and removals in the federal courts from July 1, 2001, through June 30, 2007. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that CAFA has caused an increased number of class actions based on diversity of citizenship jurisdiction to be filed in the federal courts.

The Federal Judicial Center has undertaken a long-term study of the impact of the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (CAFA) on the resources of the federal courts. The third interim report was delivered to the committee on April 16, 2007 for discussion at its April 19 meeting and reports on the results of statistical tests of the impact of CAFA on federal courts across the country.

A description of the implementation in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals of word processing and an electronic-mail network using Courtran computer resources. The report concludes that these technologies substantially reduce appellate processing time, improve secretarial and judicial productivity, and expedite delivery of correspondence to chambers and offices.

See also Follow-Up Study of Word Processing and Electronic Mail in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals (1980).