Law Commons^™

Appealing Compelled Disclosures In Discovery That Threaten First Amendment Rights, Richard L. Heppner Jr.

Law Faculty Publications

Last year, the Supreme Court held in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta that a California anti-fraud policy compelling charities to disclose the identities of their major donors violated the First Amendment. That holding stems from the 1958 case NAACP v. Alabama where the Court held that a discovery order compelling the NAACP to disclose the names of its members violated the First Amendment right of free association because of the members’ justifiable fear of retaliation.

In the over sixty years since NAACP v. Alabama, the Court has only decided a handful of cases about how compelled disclosures of …

Bespoke Discovery, Jessica Erickson

Law Faculty Publications

The U.S. legal system gives contracting parties significant freedom to customize the procedures that will govern their future disputes. With forum selection clauses, parties can decide where they will litigate future disputes. With fee-shifting provisions, they can choose who will pay for these suits. And with arbitration clauses, they can make upfront decisions to opt out of the traditional legal system altogether. Parties can also waive their right to appeal, their right to a jury trial, and their right to file a class action. Bespoke procedure, in other words, is commonplace in the United States.

Far less common, however, are …

Discovering Discovery: Non-Party Access To Pretrial Information In The Federal Courts 1938-2006, Seymour Moskowitz

Law Faculty Publications

In the modern era, the pretrial process is critical to the disposition of almost all litigation. The vast majority of cases never go to trial. Those which are contested at trial and upon appeal are often decided upon the results of the information gather before trial. This is true in both private litigation and in public interest cases where "private attorneys general" may only function effectively with court-enforced discovery. Despite the significance of the Article III courts to our society, transparency in their processes for resolving civil disputes has been severely compromised. Threats to openness emanate from multiple sources. This …

The Merger Of Common-Law And Equity Pleading In Virginia, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

This article describes the separation of common law and equity in Virginia leading up to the 2006 merger of common law and equity pleading and the problems that remain to be solved by the courts.

Rediscovering Discovery: State Procedural Rules And The Level Playing Field, Seymour Moskowitz

Law Faculty Publications

In the modern era of few trials, the pretrial process is critical to the disposition of most cases. Discovery has been a fiercely debated subject for may years. Many commentators believe that discovery has become too expensive, very time consuming, and often abusive. Others disagree, and articulate an entirely different diagnosis of the problems in our civil justice system. Regardless, the scope of discovery, and the process for undertaking it, create predictable advantages and disadvantages for many types of litigants. Although state courts dispose of the vast majority of cases in the United States, academic writings on procedural matters, particularly …

A Civil Discovery Dilemma For The Arizona Supreme Court, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

The drafters of the 1938 Federal Rules of Civil Procedure hoped to establish those rules as a model that the states could adopt, thus fostering national and intrastate procedural uniformity. This objective was not realized generally or by very many specific jurisdictions. Observers of the increasingly fractured procedural regime in the federal arena have voiced concerns about the mounting numbers of strictures, the accelerating pace of procedural change and the growing inconsistency of the requirements imposed. Illustrative are the major 1983 and 1993 federal discovery amendments, which new discovery provisions further revised in December 2000. The Civil Justice Reform Act …

Discovery Reform Redux, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

The recent resolve of the Advisory Committee on the Civil Rules to revisit reform of the discovery rules, which the Supreme Court revised as recently as 1993, is replete with ironies. In August, 1998, that Committee, which has primary responsibility for studying the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and developing suggestions for their improvement, published proposals that would significantly revise the substantial 1993 revisions of the discovery rules. Ironies suffuse many specific aspects of the rule revision process and of the proposals to revise the 1993 revisions less than five years after their implementation. I emphasize the proposal to revise …

Automatic Disclosure And Disuniformity In The Ninth Circuit, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

The 1993 amendment to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(a)(1) imposes automatic disclosure and is the most controversial formal proposal to revise the Federal Rules ever developed. The provision requires litigants to divulge information that is important to their cases before commencing formal discovery. The amendment also permits all ninety-four federal districts to vary the revision or to reject it completely. Moreover, judges and parties in specific cases may modify any disclosure requirements adopted by the districts.

The amendment has remained controversial since it became effective on December 1, 1993. Less than a majority of districts subscribe to the Federal …

Annual Survey Of Virginia Law - Civil Procedure And Practice, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

This article considers recent developments in the field of Virginia civil procedure and practice, including statutes, rules of court, and opinions of the Supreme Court of Virginia and the Court of Appeals of Virginia that have appeared between May 1986 and May 1987. This article also comments on cases in volumes five through eight of Virginia Circuit Court Opinions, many of which were decided before 1986. It is appropriate to mention them here since they were only recently made generally available through publication. In order to facilitate the discussion of numerous Virginia Code sections, they will be referred to in …

Discovery Of Penalites, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

The purpose of this essay is to discuss some aspects of the scope of the privilege against self-incrimination. It will consider first what can not be and then what can be discovered by the common law of England before 1776, when the first republican constitution of Virginia was promulgated. Finally, the developments in Virginia and federal practice will be dealt with.