Alexandra D Lahav

Alexandra D. Lahav is an internationally recognized expert on the U.S. civil justice system and tort law.  She takes an institutional approach to the study of these subjects, using methods and perspectives drawn from legal analysis, history, political theory, and economics.  She is a Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. She teaches civil procedure, torts, complex litigation, professional responsibility, and related subjects.  She has also taught at Harvard, Columbia and Yale Law Schools, among other places.

Her award-winning book, In Praise of Litigation (Oxford 2017), makes the case that litigation is a social good that promotes democratic values.  Professor Lahav is also coauthor of the fifth edition of the popular civil procedure casebook Civil Procedure: Doctrine, Practice, and Context.

Her subjects of research include

• Class action doctrine

• MDL litigation, especially mass tort litigation

• Torts, especially mass torts and causation

• Bellwether trials

• Jurisdiction and venue

• Evaluating litigation risk

In recent work on the civil justice system she has studied the changing win rate patterns in the federal courts, the effects of incentives on judicial decision-making, and the optimal design of procedural systems.  She has also studied the role of litigation tactics in changing the law in the antebellum period of American history. Currently, she is spearheading a project on evaluating litigation risk. In her work on torts, Prof. Lahav has explored the use of statistical sampling to resolve mass tort cases, the role of the jury, and how insights from epidemiology can inform the resolution of mass and toxic torts.  

Prof. Lahav has also written amicus briefs in important court cases, mostly relating to class action doctrine.  She is a frequent commentator on mass tort and class action practice before judges, at continuing legal education conferences, and in the media.