594
Syllabus
stitute for Rule 23's certification criteria a standard never adopted by the rulemakers—that if a settlement is "fair," then certification is proper. Pp. 619-622. (c) Rule 23(b)(3)'s predominance requirement is not met by the factors relied on by the District Court and the settling parties: class members' shared experience of asbestos exposure; their common interest in receiving prompt and fair compensation, while minimizing the risks and transaction costs inherent in the tort system's asbestos litigation process; and the settlement's fairness. The benefits asbestos-exposed persons might gain from a grand-scale compensation scheme is a matter fit for legislative consideration, but it is not pertinent to the predominance inquiry. That inquiry trains on the legal or factual questions that qualify each class member's case as a genuine controversy, questions that preexist any settlement, and tests whether proposed classes are sufficiently cohesive to warrant adjudication by representation. In contrast, the Rule 23(e) inquiry protects unnamed class members from unjust or unfair settlements agreed to by fainthearted or self-interested class representatives; the Rule 23(e) prescription was not designed to assure the class cohesion that legitimizes representative action in the first place. If a common interest in a fair compromise could satisfy Rule 23(b)(3)'s predominance requirement, that vital prescription would be stripped of any meaning in the settlement context. The predominance criterion is not satisfied by class members' shared experience of asbestos exposure, given the greater number of questions peculiar to the several categories of class members, and to individuals within each category, and the significance of those uncommon questions. No settlement class called to the Court's attention is as sprawling as the one certified here. Although mass tort cases arising from a common cause or disaster may, depending upon the circumstances, satisfy the predominance requirement, the Advisory Committee for the 1966 Rule 23 revision advised that such cases are ordinarily not appropriate for class treatment, and warned district courts to exercise caution when individual stakes are high and disparities among class members great. The certification in this case does not follow the counsel of caution. That certification cannot be upheld, for it rests on a conception of Rule 23(b)(3)'s predominance requirement irreconcilable with the Rule's design. Pp. 622-625. (d) Nor can the class approved by the District Court satisfy Rule 23(a)(4)'s adequate representation inquiry. That inquiry serves to uncover conflicts of interest between named parties and the class they seek to represent. See General Telephone Co. of Southwest v. Falcon, 457 U. S. 147, 157-158, n. 13. Representatives must be part of the class and possess the same interest and suffer the same injury as the class
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