Ortiz v. Fibreboard Corp., 527 U.S.

815, 832

16
* Although representative suits have been recognized in various forms since the earliest days
of English law, see generally S. Yeazell, From Medieval Group Litigation to the Modern
Class Action (1987); see also Marcin, Searching for the Origin of the Class Action, 23 Cath.
U. L. Rev. 515, 517-524 (1973), class actions as we recognize them today developed as an
exception to the formal rigidity of the necessary parties rule in equity, see Hazard, Gedid, &
Sowle, An Historical Analysis of the Binding Effect of Class Suits, 146 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1849,
1859-1860 (1998) (hereinafter Hazard, Gedid, & Sowle), as well as from the bill of peace, an
equitable device for combining multiple suits, see Z. Chafee, Some Problems of Equity 161-
167, 200-203 (1950). The necessary parties rule in equity mandated that "all persons
materially interested, either as plaintiffs or defendants in the subject matter of the bill ought
to be made parties to the suit, however numerous they may be." West v. Randall, 29 F. Cas.
718, 721 (No. 17,424) (CC RI) (1820) (Story, J.). But because that rule would at times
unfairly deny recovery to the party before the court, equity developed exceptions, among
them one to cover situations "where the parties are very numerous, and the court perceives,
that it will be almost impossible to bring them all before the court; or where the question is of
general interest, and a few may sue for the benefit of the whole; or where the parties form a
part of a voluntary association for public or private purposes, and may be fairly supposed to
represent the rights and interests of the whole ... ." Id., at 722; see J. Story, Commentaries on
Equity Pleadings §97 (J. Gould 10th rev. ed. 1892); F. Calvert, A Treatise upon the Law
Respecting Parties to Suits in Equity 17-29 (1837) (hereinafter Calvert, Parties to Suits in
Equity). From these roots, modern class action practice emerged in the 1966 revision of Rule
23. In drafting Rule 23(b), the Advisory Committee sought to catalogue in "functional" terms
"those recurrent life patterns which call for mass litigation through representative parties."
Kaplan, A Prefatory Note, 10 B. C. Ind. & Com. L. Rev. 497 (1969).

Smith v. Swormstedt, 57 U.S. 288, 303 (1853).

86
Where the parties interested in the suit are numerous, their rights and
liabilities are so subject to change and fluctuation by death or otherwise,
that it would not be possible, without very great inconvenience, to make
all of them parties, and would oftentimes prevent the prosecution of the
suit to a hearing. For convenience, therefore, and to prevent a failure of
justice, a court of equity permits a portion of the parties in interest to
represent the entire body, and the decree binds all of them the same as if
all were before the court. The legal and equitable rights and liabilities of
all being before the court by representation, and especially where the
subject-matter of the suit is common to all, there can be very little danger
but that the interest of all will be properly protected and maintained.