[5][21] In the United States, 19th and 20th century legal treatises[22][23][24] show that consent decrees and the role of the court in the parties' settlement was ambiguous.
[26][27] Creating space for courts, which are important actors in implementing a consent decree, to enter into a settlement, Rule 23[28] of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure gives federal district courts the power to approve class action settlements as long as they are "fair, reasonable, and adequate".
[26][36] Many of the early court cases involving consent decree set precedents for the roles that judges would play in the negotiating, approving, interpreting, and modifying a settlement between two parties.
[5][9][27] The role of the judge in regard to consent decree wavers between "rubber stamping" versus applying their own judgments to a proposed settlement.
[9][37] In 1879, Pacific Railroad of Missouri v. Ketchum bound the court's role in consent decrees to simply supporting to an agreement that parties have already established on their own.
[31][41] In regard to litigation in performance rights organizations such as American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and Broadcast Music, Inc. in United States v. ASCAP, which began in 1941, the Department of Justice used consent decrees (which are amended according to the times and technology) to regulate how they issued blanket licenses to ensure that trade is not restrained and that the prices of licenses would not be competitive.
[39][57] In Standard Oil Company of New Jersey v. United States, the government used consent decrees to dissolve the horizontal monopoly that John D. Rockefeller had established.
[71] To stop judicial intervention in schools and end the consent decree through a court order, districts must demonstrate desegregation within six criteria defined in the Green v. County School Board of New Kent County[72] ruling – which include, student assignment, faculty, staff, transportation, extracurricular activities, and facilities.
[82] On June 16, 2023, Minneapolis officials promised to enter into negotiations for a consent decree to be enforced by the DOJ in response to a scathing June 2023 US Department of Justice report resulting from a multiyear federal investigation into the "patterns and practices" of Minneapolis Police Department following the May 25, 2020 murder of George Floyd by MPD officers.
[83][84] Consent decrees have been used to remedy various social issues that deal with public and private organizations, where a large number of people are often concerned even if they may not be members of either party involved.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination by employers on the basis of race, sex, color, religion, or national origin.
[93][94] Under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was created to be a major advocate and enforcer of the previously mentioned Title VII remedies.
[95] In a landmark decision in 1973, the EEOC, Department of Labor and AT&T compromised on a consent decree that phased out discrimination within recruiting, hiring and employment methods in regard to minorities and women.
[96] This established a precedent for other large, private U.S. companies to avoid litigation and government oversight by creating decrees in cooperation with Title VII.
[143][129] There is criticism that "the antitrust consent decree is an opaque form of government regulation that operates without many of the checks and balances that constrain and shape ordinary regulatory programs".
[145][146][147][130] Consent decrees have appeared in various forms of popular media, often as plot devices to explore legal and political themes.