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Educational Policy Committee Meeting – Open Session Book 05/16/2024

Board of Directors Special Meeting - Notice and Agenda 05/14/2024

UC Law SF 
UC Law SF Scholarship Repository 
2024 Board of Directors Agenda and Materials Board of Directors Agenda and Materials 
5-31-2024 
Board of Directors Special Meeting - Notice and Agenda 05/31/
2024 
UC Law SF 
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Recommended Citation 
UC Law SF, Board of Directors Special Meeting - Notice and Agenda 05/31/2024 (2024). 
Available at: https://repository.uclawsf.edu/board_materials_2024/27 
This Board of Directors is brought to you for free and open access by the Board of Directors Agenda and Materials 
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contact wangangela@uchastings.edu. 
 
 
 
MEETING NOTICE AND AGENDA 
 
The Board of Directors of the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco will hold a 
meeting as set forth below.   
 
EVENT:  Meeting of the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco  
Board of Directors  
 
DATE:   Friday, May 31, 2024 
 
STARTING TIME: 2:00 p.m. 
 
PLACE:       198 McAllister Street, Rm 206  
        San Francisco, CA 94102 
 
      Members of the public may also join the meeting via the web link or dial-in 
numbers provided below.   
 
Join Zoom Meeting 
https://uchastings.zoom.us/j/95140974096  
 
Meeting ID: 951 4097 4096 
One tap mobile (US) 
+12133388477,,95140974096#  
+12063379723,,95140974096#  
 
Dial by your location 
 
        +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose) 
        +1 213 338 8477 US (Los Angeles) 
        +1 669 219 2599 US (San Jose) 
         
Meeting ID: 951 4097 4096 
 
Agenda:  
 
1. Roll Call 
Director Simona Agnolucci, Chair 
Director Albert Zecher, Vice Chair 
Director Shashi Deb 
Director Andrew Giacomini 
Director Andrew Houston 
Director Claes Lewenhaupt 
Director Mary Noel Pepys 
Director Courtney Greene Power 
Director Chip Robertson  
 
 
2. Public Comment Period 
This is an opportunity for members of the public to comment on agenda items. Public comment on any 
agenda item will be limited to no more than two minutes per speaker and 30 minutes total. Groups or 
organizations that wish to comment on a particular item are encouraged to have a single representative 
speak for no more than two minutes. These limits can be varied at the discretion of the Chair. Persons 
who wish to speak on matters not on the agenda should make their request in writing to the General 
Counsel and Secretary of the College. 
 
 
The Board will enter closed session pursuant to Education Code Section 92032(b)(7). Only Board 
members and authorized participants are permitted to attend. 
 
3. Student Success Strategies 
 
4. Litigation Updates 
 4.1. Name-Change Litigation and Insurance Cost Recovery 
4.2. Tenderloin Sidewalks Litigation 
4.3  Labor Matters 
 
The Board will return to open session. 
 
5. Adjournment 
 
 
The Board and its committees reserve the right to take action, or not, on any item on the agenda. 
 
This notice and agenda are available at the following University of California College of the Law, San 
Francisco website address: https://uclawsf.edu/our-story/board-of-directors/board-meeting-notices-
agendas-and-materials/  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
 
For further information, please contact John K. DiPaolo, Secretary of the College, 200 McAllister Street, 
San Francisco, CA 94102, (415) 565-4850 or OGC@uclawsf.edu . You are encouraged to inform Mr. 
DiPaolo in at least one day in advance of the meeting of your intent to speak during the public comment 
period, which will assist the Board in maximizing the opportunity for public comment.  
 
The University of California College of the Law, San Francisco complies with the Americans with 
Disabilities Act. Please contact the Secretary’s Office in advance of the meeting for accommodations.  
 
 
 
 
 
 


English

Board of Directors Special Meeting - Notice and Agenda 05/31/2024

Crawford, John

Securities Regulation with memo

Grimaldi, Zoë

Editor-in-Chief’s Forward

In May 2023, Montana became the first state in America to ban the social media app TikTok. This article proposes a two-prong analytical framework for evaluating the federalism limits of Montana’s TikTok ban (SB 419) and similar laws that other states might enact in the future. The first prong is a mandatory constitutional analysis of whether the state law runs afoul of restrictions on states’ foreign policy powers. These limits are threefold— Article I, Section 10, preemption, and the dormant Commerce Clause. This article focuses on federalism limits that only the states face and does not explore other constraints that the federal government might face, such as the First Amendment’s rights to free speech and association. The second prong is an optional, persuasive policy analysis of whether the state law makes sense based on concepts and data from economics. Applying this framework, SB 419 should fall as a matter of law and policy

Luo, Wei

The Spy in Your Pocket: Montana’s TikTok Ban and the Federalism Limits of State-level Foreign Policy

Masthead

Dodson, Scott

The Judges' Book 
Volume 8 Article 6 
2024 
Civil Procedure: Why In-State Plaintiffs Invoke Diversity 
Jurisdiction 
Scott Dodson 
Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.uclawsf.edu/judgesbook 
 Part of the Judges Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Dodson, Scott (2024) "Civil Procedure: Why In-State Plaintiffs Invoke Diversity Jurisdiction," The Judges' 
Book: Vol. 8, Article 6. 
Available at: https://repository.uclawsf.edu/judgesbook/vol8/iss1/6 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by UC Law SF Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted 
for inclusion in The Judges' Book by an authorized editor of UC Law SF Scholarship Repository. For more 
information, please contact wangangela@uchastings.edu. 
Vol. 8 The Judges’ Book 29 
Civil Procedure 
Why In-State Plaintiffs Invoke Diversity Jurisdiction 
 
Scott Dodson1 
 
Introduction 
 
Congress has long given federal courts diversity jurisdiction to 
hear cases involving state-law claims when opposing parties are 
from different states and other requirements are met. The 
traditional, and current, rationale for federal diversity jurisdiction 
is to offer a neutral federal forum to avoid the appearance of a risk 
of bias that a state-court judge or jury might have in favor of an in-
state party and against an out-of-state opponent.2  
Debates about the scope and persistence of diversity 
jurisdiction have weighed the bias rationale against the costs that 
diversity jurisdiction imposes.3 Mindful of those costs, Congress 
has imposed an amount-in-controversy threshold and has restricted 
in-state defendants from removing a diversity case from state to 
federal court.4 But Congress has not—at least not for many years—
restricted in-state plaintiffs (“ISPs”) from invoking diversity 
jurisdiction when suing out-of-state defendants. Thus, the law 
allows ISPs to invoke diversity jurisdiction and impose its costs 
without any obvious benefit of alleviating out-of-state bias. 
One might think, given the bias rationale of diversity 
jurisdiction, that ISPs rarely would invoke diversity jurisdiction. 
History, however, tells a different story. For decades, thousands of 
ISPs a year, making up sizeable percentages of the diversity docket, 
have invoked diversity jurisdiction.5 In 2019, for example, of all 
original domestic-diversity cases filed by represented plaintiffs, 
more than 51% were filed by ISPs.6 In other words, in-state 
 
1 Excerpted and adapted from Scott Dodson, Why Do In-State Plaintiffs 
Invoke Diversity Jurisdiction?, L. & SOC. INQUIRY (2023). 
2 Scott Dodson, Beyond Bias in Diversity Jurisdiction, 69 DUKE L.J. 267, 
271–82 (2019). 
3 Id. at 288–90. 
4 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a); id. § 1441(b). 
5 See Victor E. Flango, Litigant Choice Between State and Federal Courts, 
46 S.C. L. REV. 961 (1995) (documenting this trend). 
6 Dodson, supra note 1. 
30 Scholarship for the Bench 2024 
plaintiffs invoked diversity jurisdiction more often than out-of-state 
plaintiffs did. Why? 
 
Methodology 
 
To answer that question, I downloaded data from the Federal 
Judicial Center’s Integrated Database on all diversity cases filed 
originally in, or removed to, federal court in 2019. I selected the 
year 2019 as the most recent filing year unaffected by the COVID-
19 pandemic, which caused significant disruptions in court systems 
and may have generated unique forum-selection considerations. I 
excluded cases involving a pro se plaintiff, who may not have fully 
understood the legal requirements or the technical and strategic 
considerations of jurisdictional choice. I removed cases with 
foreign or nondiverse parties, and I removed cases without ISPs. 
That left me with 29,045 diversity cases filed in or removed to 
federal court in 2019 and involving a represented ISP. I then ran 
statistical comparisons to other years to confirm that 2019 was 
representative along the case and party dimensions captured in the 
data. 
To gather direct evidence of motivations, I created an original 
dataset of attorney motivations. Starting with the docket dataset of 
29,045 cases, I removed the MDL-eligible cases because, as I 
explain below, the motivation to join an existing MDL can be 
confidently inferred from the docket data, and I wanted to isolate 
non-MDL cases to focus on other motivations. I then hand-
collected the ISP attorneys’ email addresses from the case dockets 
for the 8,103 original cases. After deduplication, the dataset 
contained 6,569 original diversity cases filed in federal court by 
represented ISPs. 
I emailed each attorney a link to a Qualtrics online survey, 
which asked various questions about the case and forum-selection 
motivations. I linked survey responses to all underlying docket data 
for each case except party names, docket number, and attorney 
information, which were delinked to preserve confidentiality and 
anonymity. In addition, I set the Qualtrics surveys as anonymized 
to avoid recording respondent IP addresses and locational data. 
Excluding the 487 emails that bounced, failed, or were marked as 
spam, approximately 6,000 emails were reliably sent. 
My response rate was slightly above 10%, with 626 responses. 
I then excluded survey responses that did not contain answers 
Vol. 8 The Judges’ Book 31 
through the motivation question, whose answers made clear that the 
case had been miscoded in some way, or whose answers made clear 
that the attorney surveyed was not the attorney who chose the 
forum. These exclusions left me with 402 usable responses. These 
response numbers are in line with other attorney-survey studies.7 I 
also used statistical testing to confirm that the 402 cases with 
responses were representative of the 6,569 surveyed cases in terms 
of case characteristics recorded in the docket data. 
 
Findings and Results 
 
My findings suggest that motivations for represented ISPs to 
invoke diversity jurisdiction fall roughly into three categories. 
First, individual ISPs suing corporate defendants for tort claims 
in MDL-eligible cases invoke federal court for reasons of MDL 
transfer and consolidation. According to the 2019 docket data, 
between 20% and 24% of original cases filed by represented ISPs 
were either transferred for consolidation with an MDL or eligible 
for MDL transfer. By comparison, only 2% to 5% of the removed 
cases were eligible for MDL transfer. I then analyzed the types of 
cases making up the MDL-eligible group. The statistics, confirmed 
by regressions, strongly correlate MDL-eligible original diversity 
cases with individual ISPs suing corporate defendants for tort 
claims. The data thus suggest that MDL eligibility is a strong 
motivation for represented ISPs—especially those with tort claims 
against corporate defendants—to file diversity cases in federal 
court. 
Second, individual ISPs in non-MDL-eligible cases invoke 
diversity jurisdiction to preempt the defendant’s opportunity to 
remove the case. Among the 402 survey responses, preempting the 
defendant’s removal was selected most frequently (by 197 
respondents) as a basis for filing in federal court. That motivation 
was also ranked the strongest motivation by 151 respondents, and 
44% of respondents attributed at least moderate weight to that 
 
7 Kristin Bumiller, Choice of Forum in Diversity Cases: Analysis of a 
Survey and Implications for Reform, 15 L. & SOC’Y REV. 749 (1980) (861 
responses); Jerry Goldman & Kenneth S. Marks, Diversity Jurisdiction 
and Local Bias: A Preliminary Empirical Inquiry, 9 J. LEGAL STUDS. 93 
(1980) (320 responses); Neal Miller, An Empirical Study of Forum 
Choices in Removal Cases Under Diversity and Federal Question 
Jurisdiction, 41 AM. U. L. REV. 369 (1992) (482 responses). 
32 Scholarship for the Bench 2024 
factor. Correlation analyses revealed that those who selected this 
motivation were significantly correlated with individual ISPs 
whose counsel typically represented plaintiffs. 
Third, corporate ISPs whose attorneys tend to represent 
defendants in federal court invoke diversity jurisdiction primarily 
for reasons of efficiency, expense, or convenience; preferences for 
federal procedure; and perceived better quality of federal judges. 
Among the 402 survey responses, the next three most common 
motivations after preempting the defendant’s removal were quality 
of federal judges (180 respondents), preferred federal procedures 
(172 respondents), and efficiency/expense/ convenience (164 
respondents).8 Correlation analyses revealed that those who 
selected these motivations were significantly correlated with 
corporate ISPs whose counsel tended to represent defendants and 
tended to practice in federal court. 
 
Discussion and Implications 
 
These findings add to the debate about the bias rationale of 
diversity jurisdiction by suggesting that state-court bias—even if it 
is perceived to exist—can be outweighed by more practical and 
strategic factors in the forum-selection calculus. For individual 
MDL-eligible plaintiffs, the interest in (or resignation to) 
consolidation with an existing MDL likely exerts a powerful 
counterweight to the benefits of state court. For corporate plaintiffs 
and their attorneys, the interest in operating under familiar federal 
procedures, along with the potential efficiencies and perceived 
higher quality of federal court, can outweigh any perceived home-
state advantage of state court. These findings complicate the story 
of diversity jurisdiction and its rationale as primarily about the risks 
of state-court bias, and they suggest that diversity jurisdiction may 
offer non-bias-related benefits for certain parties and cases. 
At the same time, the findings validate the conventional 
wisdom that, in general, individual parties prefer state court, while 
corporate parties prefer federal court. The availability of federal 
MDLs may be a key exception to the general plaintiff preference, 
 
8 The next most common—a preference for federal juries—was selected 
by only 39 respondents. Notably, bias based on the party’s location or the 
opponent’s connection to the state was selected by only 6 and 4 
respondents, respectively. 
Vol. 8 The Judges’ Book 33 
but the correlations between corporate ISPs and motivations based 
on procedure, quality, and efficiency are consistent with corporate 
parties’ general preference for federal court. Likewise, individual-
ISP choice to file in federal court to preempt the defendant’s 
opportunity to remove the case also is consistent with individual 
parties’ general preference for state court. The findings dovetail 
with a widespread and dominant narrative about the perceived 
differential experiences of individual and corporate parties in 
federal courts, and they help explain why the docket data show 
substantial numbers of ISP-filed diversity cases despite evidence 
that federal courts to be more antiplaintiff than state courts.9 
Turning to normative implications, the findings support a more 
nuanced approach to diversity reform. The invocation of diversity 
jurisdiction by individual ISPs to facilitate MDL consolidation may 
have positive benefits for both parties and courts and should be 
taken seriously. MDL cases often have national scope and national 
implications, heightening the justification for consolidated 
adjudication in federal court. As a practical matter, MDL’s 
enablement of consolidation across state lines—a feature 
unavailable in state court—has become a powerful vehicle for 
efficient case resolution. More research should be conducted to 
better understand the complexities of forum choice in the MDL 
context. The finding here—that MDL eligibility likely motivates 
ISPs in diversity cases to elect federal court—should help frame 
those studies. 
The motivation to select federal court to preempt removal has 
its own unique ramifications for diversity jurisdiction. Only 
diversity abolitionists would refuse diversity jurisdiction to out-of-
state defendants seeking to remove a case; such removals facially 
align with the out-of-state bias rationale justifying diversity 
jurisdiction in the first place. If ISPs preempt removal by filing in 
federal court a case that was going to end up there anyway through 
removal, no one should have cause to complain. In fact, all should 
support the result. The defendant who was going to remove gets its 
preferred forum, the plaintiff saves the costs and delay associated 
with removal, the state court avoids ever having the case on its 
 
9  Stephen B. Burbank & Sean Farhang, Litigation Reform: An 
Institutional Approach, 162 U. PA. L. REV. 1543 (2014); Kevin M. 
Clermont & Theodore Eisenberg, Anti-Plaintiff Bias in the Federal 
Appellate Courts, 84 JUDICATURE 128 (2000). 
34 Scholarship for the Bench 2024 
docket in the first place, and the federal court maintains consistent 
control over the case from start to finish without having to worry 
about adjudicating defects in removal procedure. Perhaps diversity 
jurisdiction invoked by ISPs for this reason should be encouraged 
rather than discouraged. 
Meanwhile, the finding that varied practical and strategic 
motivations drive forum selection demands different 
considerations. How strongly motivations based on private benefits 
like efficiency, procedural familiarity, and judicial quality should 
be weighed against the systemic costs of diversity jurisdiction is 
and should continue to be an ongoing conversation, but the 
correlation of these motivations with particular types of litigants 
and attorneys suggests that these private benefits are felt 
disuniformly across the familiar divides of individual/corporate 
status and plaintiff/defense bar. Although corporate-party 
preferences for federal court are consistent with the ancient concern 
that local prejudices might burden national commercial and 
economic interests, the overwhelming size and pervasiveness of 
today’s federal bureaucracy suggests that diversity jurisdiction is 
not as necessary today to protect those national interests. And 
experience with the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 suggests that 
diversity reform that caters to corporate parties should be 
approached with caution to avoid over-federalizing litigation to the 
detriment of both the state and federal courts. In general, my 
findings offer a better understanding of stakeholder interests that 
should inform ongoing debates about diversity jurisdiction. 
Finally, my findings suggest avenues for future research. 
Although the survey results show three predominant categories, 
they also reveal significant minority positions, which theoretically 
could be explained by individualized case circumstances and 
attorney preferences, but understanding those minority positions 
will require larger datasets for validating theoretical explanations. 
Geographic influences, for example, are ripe for further study. 
 
  
Vol. 8 The Judges’ Book 35 
Conclusion 
 
In-state plaintiffs file diversity cases in federal court with 
frequency. They do so for discrete reasons correlated with party and 
case characteristics. Understanding those reasons has useful 
implications for future diversity-jurisdiction reform. 
 
* * * 
36 Scholarship for the Bench 2024 
 


Civil Procedure: Why In-State Plaintiffs Invoke Diversity Jurisdiction

Honig, Jesse

Takacs, David

Environmental Law: Wolf Law

UC Law SF 
UC Law SF Scholarship Repository 
2024 Board of Directors Agenda and Materials Board of Directors Agenda and Materials 
9-5-2024 
Meeting of the Executive Committee - Notice and Agenda 09/05/
2024 
UC Law SF 
Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.uclawsf.edu/board_materials_2024 
 
 
 
MEETING NOTICE AND AGENDA 
 
The Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of University of California College of the Law, San 
Francisco will hold a meeting as set forth below.  
 
EVENT:  Meeting of the University of California 
   College of the Law, San Francisco Board of Directors    
   Executive Committee  
 
DATE:   Thursday, September 5, 2024  
 
STARTING TIME: 2 p.m. 
 
PLACE:        Willkie Farr & Gallagher 
        333 Bush St.   
        San Francisco, CA 94104 
 
      Members of the public may also join the meeting via the web link or dial-in 
numbers provided below.   
 
Join Zoom Meeting 
https://uchastings.zoom.us/j/95140974096  
 
Meeting ID: 951 4097 4096 
One tap mobile (US) 
+12133388477,,95140974096#  
+12063379723,,95140974096#  
 
Dial by your location 
 
        +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose) 
        +1 213 338 8477 US (Los Angeles) 
        +1 669 219 2599 US (San Jose) 
Meeting ID: 951 4097 4096 
Find your local number: https://uchastings.zoom.us/u/ad366sO7BU 
 
Join by SIP 
95140974096@zoomcrc.com 
 
Join by H.323 
162.255.37.11 (US West) 
162.255.36.11 (US East) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Agenda:  
 
1. Roll Call 
 
Director Albert Zecher, Chair 
Courtney Greene Power, Vice Chair  
Director Shashi Deb 
Director Andrew Houston  
Director Chip Robertson 
 
2. Public Comment Period 
This is an opportunity for members of the public to comment on agenda items. Public comment on any 
agenda item will be limited to no more than two minutes per speaker and 30 minutes total. Groups or 
organizations that wish to comment on a particular item are encouraged to have a single representative 
speak for no more than two minutes. These limits can be varied at the discretion of the Chair. Persons 
who wish to speak on matters not on the agenda should make their request in writing to the General 
Counsel and Secretary of the College. 
 
*3. Approval of Prior Meeting Minutes 
Approval of Minutes from August 19, 2024 
 
4. Student Success Strategies 
 
The Board will enter closed session pursuant to Education Code Section 92032(b)(5). Only Board 
members and authorized participants are permitted to attend. 
 
*5. Approval of Prior Meeting Minutes 
Approval of Minutes from August 19, 2024 
 
6. Legal Updates 
a. AFSCME  
     *Me-Too Arbitration: Consideration of Contract Amendment 
b. UAW – Student Union  
c. Sidewalks Litigation  
d. Name Change Litigation  
 
7. Structural Deficit Plan 
 
The Board will return to open session. 
 
8. Adjournment 
 
 
The Board and its committees reserve the right to take action, or not, on any item on the agenda. 
 
This notice and agenda are available at the following University of California College of the Law, San 
Francisco website address: https://uclawsf.edu/our-story/board-of-directors/board-meeting-notices-
agendas-and-materials/  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
 
For further information, please contact John K. DiPaolo, Secretary of the College, 200 McAllister Street, 
San Francisco, CA 94102, (415) 565-4850 or OGC@uclawsf.edu . You are encouraged to inform Mr. 
 
DiPaolo in at least one day in advance of the meeting of your intent to speak during the public comment 
period, which will assist the Board in maximizing the opportunity for public comment.  
 
The University of California College of the Law, San Francisco complies with the Americans with 
Disabilities Act. Please contact the Secretary’s Office in advance of the meeting for accommodations. 


Meeting of the Executive Committee - Notice and Agenda 09/05/2024

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