Class actions are among the most controversial forms of litigation in the United States today. To their advocates, they provide an opportunity for interested private citizens to have a meaningful role in combating corporate misconduct, supplementing or even substituting for inadequate regulatory oversight. To their detractors, however, class actions are not much more than a racket.

Source: The Cure for Corporate Wrongdoing: Class Actions vs. Individual Prosecutions by Jed S. Rakoff | The New York Review of Books