University of Georgia
School of Law
305 Hirsch Hall
Athens, GA 30602
United States
B.A., Vanderbilt University
J.D., Florida State University
M.F.A., University of Georgia
Complex Litigation
Mass Torts
Multidistrict Litigation: Law, Practice, and Strategy
Civil Procedure
Torts
Elizabeth Chamblee Burch joined the School of Law faculty in 2011. She was promoted to the rank of full professor in 2015 and served a visiting professor at Harvard Law School in 2017. After holding the Charles H. Kirbo Chair of Law for two years, she assumed the Fuller E. Callaway Chair of Law in 2019. She is the author of Mass Tort Deals: Backroom Bargaining in Multidistrict Litigation (Cambridge University Press 2019) and her teaching and research interests include civil procedure, class actions and mass torts.
Burch is an award-winning scholar whose groundbreaking work on multidistrict litigation and class actions won the American Law Institute's Early Career Scholars Medal in 2015, the Fred C. Zacharias Memorial Prize for Professional Responsibility Scholarship in 2016 and the Mangano Dispute Resolution Advancement Award in 2019.
Burch has published over 40 articles and essays in respected journals such as the Columbia Law Review, New York University Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Cornell Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, Washington University Law Review, Boston University Law Review and George Washington Law Review, among others. She co-authors a casebook titled The Law of Class Actions and Other Aggregate Litigation with the late Richard A. Nagareda, Robert G. Bone, and Patrick Woolley.
Burch has delivered over 120 lectures at research institutions across the United States and abroad to diverse audiences--from law professors at their annual meeting to federal judges at their judicial retreats, lawyers and jurists at the American Law Institute and the American Bar Association, and psychologists at the International Congress on the Psychology of Law. She was elected as a member of the American Law Institute in 2013, and she is a frequent commentator in various international and national news media such as National Public Radio's Marketplace, BBC World News, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Atlantic, The Economist, Time, and The L.A. Times.
Before joining the School of Law's faculty, she was an assistant professor at Florida State University College of Law, where she received the university-wide Graduate Teaching Award and was voted "Professor of the Year" by second- and third-year students. Burch began her academic career in 2006 at Cumberland School of Law, part of Samford University, where she received the Harvey S. Jackson Excellence in Teaching Award and the Lightfoot, Franklin & White Faculty Scholarship Award. In 2014, she received the School of Law's John C. O'Byrne Memorial Award for Significant Contributions Furthering Student-Faculty Relations.
Before entering the legal academy, Burch worked as an associate at Holland & Knight in Atlanta, where she practiced in the area of complex litigation, including securities class actions. She has served as the mass torts subcommittee chair for the American Bar Association's Class Action and Derivative Suits Committee, on the executive board for the Association of American Law Schools' Scholarship Committee and as a co-editor of the Mass Tort Litigation Blog.
BOOKS
The Law of Class Actions and Other Aggregate Litigation, (West Academic Publishing, 3d ed., 2020) (with R.A. Nagareda, R.G. Bone and P. Woolley).
Mass Tort Deals: Backroom Bargaining in Multidistrict Litigation (Cambridge University Press, 2019).
The Law of Class Actions and Other Aggregate Litigation (Second Edition, Foundation Press, 2013) (with Richard Nagareda, Robert G. Bone, Charles Silver, and Patrick Woolley).
ARTICLES
Plaintiffs’ Process: Civil Procedure, MDL, and a Day in Court, 42 Review of Litigation (forthcoming 2023) (with Abbe R. Gluck) (symposium)
MDL for the People, 108 Iowa Law Review 1015 (2023) (with Margaret S. Williams)
Perceptions of Justice in Multidistrict Litigation: Voices from the Crowd, 107 Cornell Law Review 1835 (2022) (with Margaret S. Williams)
MDL Revolution, 96 NYU L. Rev. 1 (2021) (with Abbe Gluck).
Information for the Common Good in Mass Torts, 70 DePaul L. Rev. 345 (2021) (with Alexandra D. Lahav).
Diversity in MDL Leadership: a Field Guide, 89 UMKC L. Rev. 841 (2021).
Judicial Adjuncts in Multidistrict Litigation, 120 Colum. L. Rev. 2129 (2020) (with Margaret S. Williams).
Publicly Funded Objectors,19 Theoretical Inquiries in L. 47 (2018).
Repeat Players in Multidistrict Litigation, 102 Cornell L. Rev. 1335 (2017) (with Margaret S. Williams).
Monopolies in Multidistrict Litigation, 70 Vand. L. Rev. 67 (2017).
Calibrating Participation: Reflections on Procedure versus Procedural Justice, 65 DePaul L. Rev. 323 (2016) (Clifford symposium).
Constructing Issue Classes, 101 Va. L. Rev. 1855 (2015).
Judging Multidistrict Litigation, 90 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 71 (2015) (awarded the 2016 Fred C. Zacharias Memorial Prize for Scholarship in Professional Responsibility).
Remanding Multidistrict Litigation, 75 La. L. Rev. 339 (2014) (symposium).
Adequately Representing Groups, 81 Fordham L. Rev. 3043 (2013) (symposium).
Disaggregating, 90 Wash. U. L. Rev 667 (2013) (symposium).
Financiers as Monitors in Aggregate Litigation, 87 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1273 (2012).
Optimal Lead Plaintiffs, 64 Vand. L. Rev. 1109 (2011) (reprinted in 53 Corp. Prac. Commentator 892 (2012)).
Litigating Together: Social, Moral, and Legal Obligations, 91 B.U. L. Rev. 87 (2011).
Group Consensus, Individual Consent, 79 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 506 (2011) (symposium).
Aggregation, Community, and the Line Between, 58 Kan. L. Rev. 889 (2010) (symposium).
Litigating Groups, 61 Ala. L. Rev 1 (2009).
Procedural Justice in Nonclass Aggregation, 44 Wake Forest L. Rev. 1 (2009).
Securities Class Actions as Pragmatic Ex Post Regulation, 43 Ga L. Rev 63 (2008).
CAFA's Impact on Litigation as a Public Good, 29 Cardozo L. Rev. 2517 (2008).
Reassessing Damages in Securities Fraud Class Actions, 66 Md. L. Rev. 348 (2007).
Unsettling Efficiency: When Non-Class Aggregation of Mass Torts Creates Second-Class Settlements, 65 La. L. Rev. 157 (2004).
Comment, Between "Merit Inquiry" and "Rigorous Analysis": Using Daubert to Navigate the Gray Areas of Federal Class Action Certification, 31 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 1041 (2004).
Comment, Rhetoric or Rights?: When Culture and Religion Bar Girls' Right to Education, 44 Va. J. Int'l L. 1073 (2004).
Comment, Post-War Iraq: Prosecuting Saddam Hussein, 7 Cal. Crim. L. Rev. 1 (2004).
Comment, Time for a Legislative Change: Florida's Stagnant Standard Governing Mental Competency for Execution, 31 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 335 (2004).
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
The Negotiation Class, 104 Judicature 12 (2020).
Nudges and Norms in Multidistrict Litigation: from Fact Sheets to Lone Pine Orders, 129 Yale L.J. Forum 64 (2019).
Financing Issue Classes: Benefits and Barriers to Third-Party Funding, 12 N.Y.U. J. L. & Bus. 889 (2016) (symposium).
Regulatory Discord and Procedure, 11 N.Y.U. J. L. & Bus. 819 (2015) (symposium).
Revisiting Government as Plaintiff, 5 J. Tort L. 227 (2014) (response to Adam S. Zimmerman, The Corrective Justice State, 5 J. Tort L. 189 (2014).
Governing Securities Class Actions, 80 U. Cin. L. Rev. 299 (2011) (symposium).
Introduction: Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 63 Vand. L. Rev. En Banc 91 (2010) (invited introduction to Vanderbilt Law Review's roundtable debate).
Procedural Adequacy, 88 Tex. L. Rev. See Also 55 (2010) (invited response to Jay Tidmarsh, Rethinking Adequacy of Representation, 87 Tex. L. Rev. 1137 (2009)).
There's A Pennoyer in My Foyer: Civil Procedure According to Dr. Seuss, 13 Green Bag 2D 105 (2009).
A New Way Forward: A Response to Judge Weinstein, 2009 Cardozo L. Rev. De Novo 168 (invited response to Judge Jack B. Weinstein, Preliminary Reflections on Administrations of Complex Litigations, 2009 Cardozo L. Rev. De Novo 1).
Nonjurisdictionality or Inequity, 102 Nw. U. L. Rev. Colloquy 64 (2007) (invited response to Scott Dodson, Jurisdictionality and Bowles v. Russell, 102 N.W. U. L. Rev. Colloquy 42 (2007)).
Superseding and Staying Judgments in Georgia, in SUPERSEDING AND STAYING JUDGMENTS: A NATIONAL COMPENDIUM (ABA 2007) (with Laurie Webb Daniel).