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Brian T. Fitzpatrick

Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise

Brian Fitzpatrick's research at Vanderbilt focuses on class action litigation, federal courts, judicial selection and constitutional law. Professor Fitzpatrick joined Vanderbilt's law faculty in 2007 after serving as the John M. Olin Fellow at New York University School of Law. He graduated first in his class from Harvard Law School and went on to clerk for Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, Professor Fitzpatrick practiced commercial and appellate litigation for several years at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and served as Special Counsel for Supreme Court Nominations to U.S. Senator John Cornyn. Before earning his law degree, Fitzpatrick graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's of science in chemical engineering from the University of Notre Dame. He has received the Hall-Hartman Outstanding Professor Award, which recognizes excellence in classroom teaching, for his Civil Procedure course.

Research Interests

Class actions, civil procedure, federal courts, judicial selection, the U.S. Supreme Court, constitutional law


Representative Publications

  • The Conservative Case for Class Actions, University of Chicago Press (2019)
    Full Text | WWW
  • "Do Class Actions Deter Misconduct?" in The Class Action Effect: From the Legislator’s Imagination to Today’s Uses and Practices, Éditions Yvon Blais, Montreal (2018)  (Catherine Piché, editor)
    Full Text | SSRN
  • "The Ideological Consequences of Judicial Selection," 70 Vanderbilt Law Review 1729 (2017)
    Full Text | SSRN | WWW
  • "An Empirical Look at Compensation in Consumer Class Actions" 11 New York University Journal of Law and Business 767 (2015) (with Robert C. Gilbert)
    Full Text | SSRN
  • "The End of Class Actions?" 57 Arizona Law Review 161 (2015)
    Full Text | SSRN | HEIN
  • "The Constitutionality of Federal Jurisdiction-Stripping Legislation and the History of State Judicial Selection and Tenure," 98 Virginia Law Review 839 (2012)
    Full Text | SSRN | HEIN
  • "Twombly and Iqbal Reconsidered," 87 Notre Dame Law Review 1621 (2012)
    Full Text | SSRN | HEIN
  • "An Empirical Study of Class Action Settlements and Their Fee Awards," 7 Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 811 (2010)
    Full Text | SSRN | HEIN
  • "Do Class Action Lawyers Make Too Little?" 158 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 2043 (2010)
    Full Text | SSRN | HEIN
  • "The End of Objector Blackmail?" 62 Vanderbilt Law Review 1623 (2009)
    Full Text | SSRN | HEIN