The general rule in the United States is that the prevailing party in a lawsuit may not recover his attorney fees from the loser unless a contractual or statutory provision explicitly allows such an award. The Supreme Court's 1975 decision in Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Society¹ scuttled the incipient development of the "private attorney general" doctrine as a rationale for attorney fees awards to successful "public interest" plaintiffs in federal court in the absence of statutory authorization.²

But the issue of attorney fees awards is hardly a dead letter. The Court's ruling in Alyeska was based on the federal court costs statute,³ and the decision therefore does not prohibit state courts from using the private attorney general doctrine as a basis for fees awards. Nor did Alyeska foreclose recovery of attorney fees in either federal or state courts under the other well-recognized "bad faith" and "common benefit" exceptions to the general American rule, although it attempted to circumscribe the instances in which the latter could be applied.⁴ This attempted limitation, along with the statutory prohibition of awards against the federal government itself⁵ and the fact that federal court decrees awarding fees against states may be prohibited by the Eleventh Amendment,⁶ has served to curtail federal judicial awards of fees under these alternative doctrines, however.⁷