Institutions cannot be taken for granted. Good faith maintenance and participation are required for our institutions to function correctly, and the civil justice system is no exception. The papers covered in this edition of the ILR Research Review focus on the interplay between the law, fundamental protections for Americans, and the health of our economy. Specifically, research covered in this edition:

• explores the origins and original purposes of punitive damages awards, how they have become an outsized and increasingly common feature on the civil justice landscape, and how they can be reformed to be more fair, more predictable, and less arbitrary;
• documents how certain state attorneys general and private plaintiffs’ attorneys are leveraging state unfair and deceptive acts and practices laws (UDAPs) to pursue policy agendas at the expense of UDAPs’ intended consumer protection role;
• highlights clear and troubling trends in litigation targeting trucking firms, threatening to disrupt an industry that carries over 72 percent of all shipped goods in the United States; and
• reveals how a small group of plaintiffs’ firms is using the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to file tens of thousands of boilerplate claims with concentrations in a few states, and offers federal and state solutions to ensure the ADA is used for its original purpose.

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