Beyond the Cheque – Therapeutic Justice and Class Action Settlements
By Shakiba Sadeghi, 3L Remedies in most civil and criminal legal proceedings focus on limited outcomes such as compensation, restitution, or punishing the wrongdoer. While these remedies are important, they are rarely sufficient in cases involving systemic wrongdoing, historical injustice, or collective trauma. In response, there has been growing interest in approaches that reframe remedies to focus on relationships, healing, and other psychological and emotional outcomes. This blog introduces therapeutic justice in the class action context and argues that class action settlements provide a meaningful opportunity to incorporate therapeutic justice principles that emerged largely from criminal and mental health proceedings, where courts began to assess how legal processes affect psychological well-being, dignity, and healing. The court approved settlement process in class actions allows for flexibility so long as the outcomes are fair, reasonable, and in the best interests of the class. This flexibility allows parties to pursue therapeutic goals that