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Federal Discovery: A Survey Of Local Rules And Practices In View Of Proposed Changes To The Federal Rules, Sherman L. Cohn

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Traditionally, except for the limited role played by pleadings and bills of particulars, the attorney in a law court did not disclose evidentiary matters until trial. "A judicial proceeding was a battle of wits rather than a search for the truth,"' and thus, each side was protected to a large extent against disclosure of his case until counsel chose to disclose it at trial. This philosophy changed some forty years ago with the introduction of discovery in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In the words of Mr. Justice Murphy, the discovery rules meant that "civil trials in the federal …