Civil Procedure: Cases and Materials
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Description
The Twelfth Edition offers an up-to-date and accessible approach to the study of Civil Procedure. Students tend to find Civil Procedure the most mysterious of their law school courses. Our goal in this edition is to present the material in a clear and engaging manner that also is challenging and rigorous. Because courses in Civil Procedure vary greatly as to the hours allotted, the extent to which they are mandatory or optional, and the law school year or years when students are expected to enroll in them, we have designed this edition for maximum flexibility in terms of an individual classroom’s coverage, depth, sensibility, and emphasis. The revised edition reflects up-to-date amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and covers important new Supreme Court cases on personal jurisdiction, federal jurisdiction, and other topics relevant to the first-year course. The edition addresses not simply doctrinal change, but also the still uncertain effects of new technology, globalism, and privatization on the system of civil justice. The edition also responds to the many helpful comments from judges, practitioners, colleagues, and students at the large number of schools in which earlier editions have been used. Our conversations confirm our own conclusion that the book is and continues to be a highly successful teaching tool, and we have preserved the basic format and much of the material from the Eleventh Edition. In our view, many older cases continue to serve as excellent teaching vehicles because of their length, focus, or open-ended nature. Where we have deleted earlier material, our preference has been to substitute contemporary cases in which the facts are interesting, in which the conflicting policies seem to be in a state of equilibrium, or in which the context has extrinsic fascination, rather than materials that offer a tight monograph various aspects of procedure. In additions, we have streamlined and synthesized some earlier notes and cases to make room for cutting-edge issues and to allow the students to self-assess and to engage in strategic thinking. The Twelfth Edition, like its predecessors, places substantial emphasis on the operation of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, but also includes state and foreign examples to enable a comparative approach. The materials in this volume refer to and are augmented by a Supplement, which contains not only the federal statutes and rules governing procedure, but also selected state provisions for comparison. A number of other materials, such as Advisory Committee notes, proposed rule alterations, and local court rules, also are included. The Supplement contains a litigation timechart and an illustrative litigation problem, showing how a case develops in practice and samples of the documents that actually might have formed a portion of the record. These samples are not designed as models to be emulated. To the contrary, they often contain defects intended to encourage students to criticize them in light of knowledge they have obtained from the cases and classroom discussion. The Supplement also includes complaints from two principal cases and one note case. The cases and excerpts from other materials have been edited carefully in order to shorten them and clarify issues for discussion. With regard to footnotes, the same numbering appears in the casebook as appears in the original sources; our footnotes are indicated by letters. Our omissions are indicated with asterisks, and where there might be any ambiguity, we provide clarifying information in a footnote.
Publication Date
2018
Edition
12
Recommended Citation
Friedenthal, Jack H.; Miller, Arthur R.; Sexton, John E.; and Hershkoff, Helen, "Civil Procedure: Cases and Materials" (2018). Faculty Books & Edited Works. 383.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-books-edited-works/383
