Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

PDF

Selected Works

2012

Civil Procedure

Articles 1 - 11 of 11

Full-Text Articles in Law

Chapters Of The Civil Jury, Doug R. Rendleman Dec 2012

Chapters Of The Civil Jury, Doug R. Rendleman

Doug Rendleman

The civil jury, though constitutionally protected by the seventh amendment, has remained a controversial institution throughout much of Anglo-American legal history. Our romantic ideals are questioned by critics who view the civil jury as prejudiced and unpredictable; proponents note the sense of fairness and "earthy wisdom" gained by community participation in the legal process. This debate surfaces in the process of accommodation between certain substantive goals of the law and the pre-verdict and post-verdict procedural devices courts have employed to control the jury. In this article, Professor Rendleman examines this conflict in his three "chapters" involving racially motivated discharges of …

Go to article

Comment On Judge F. Weis, Jr., Service By Mail—Is The Stamp Of Approval From The Hague Convention Always Enough?, Doug Rendleman Dec 2012

Comment On Judge F. Weis, Jr., Service By Mail—Is The Stamp Of Approval From The Hague Convention Always Enough?, Doug Rendleman

Doug Rendleman

Joseph F. Weis Jr's theories regarding US procedural policymaking and service by mail from the Hague Convention are examined. Weis explores two themes that run through US civil procedure: counterintuitive instrumentalism and underlying pragmatism.

Go to article

Disobedience And Coercive Contempt Confinement: The Terminally Stubborn Contemnor, Doug Rendleman Dec 2012

Disobedience And Coercive Contempt Confinement: The Terminally Stubborn Contemnor, Doug Rendleman

Doug Rendleman

No abstract provided.

Go to article

Simplification- A Civil Procedure Perspective, Doug Rendleman Dec 2012

Simplification- A Civil Procedure Perspective, Doug Rendleman

Doug Rendleman

No abstract provided.

Go to article

Arbitration And Reform In Private Securities Litigation: Dealing With The Meritorious As Well As The Frivolous, Steven A. Ramirez Jul 2012

Arbitration And Reform In Private Securities Litigation: Dealing With The Meritorious As Well As The Frivolous, Steven A. Ramirez

Steven A. Ramirez

No abstract provided.

Go to article

Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S.A. V. Brown (And J. Mcintyre Machinery, Ltd. V. Nicastro), William M. Janssen Mar 2012

Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S.A. V. Brown (And J. Mcintyre Machinery, Ltd. V. Nicastro), William M. Janssen

William M. Janssen

This chapter discusses the U.S. Supreme Court's two personal jurisdiction decisions from June 2011, and assesses their impact in drug and device litigation.

Go to article

It's All About The People: Personal Jurisdiction, Lord Of The Rings And Classroom Community In Civil Procedure I, Jennifer E. Spreng Dec 2011

It's All About The People: Personal Jurisdiction, Lord Of The Rings And Classroom Community In Civil Procedure I, Jennifer E. Spreng

Jennifer E Spreng

This article describes my ongoing experiments with “learning communities” and “spiral curricula” in my Civil Procedure I classes, as influenced by my eight years as a sole practitioner in Western Kentucky. Despite endorsement from many education theorists and classroom teachers and potential effectiveness in combating student disaffection, neither has made more than the shallowest dent in legal education. “Classroom community” implies a less stratified and more culturally respectful education experience that is more rewarding, more honorable and more likely to be urban law school graduates’ professional future. Spiral curriculum design facilitates analytical depth that leads to a sense of the …

Go to article

Rethinking Extraordinary Circumstances, Scott Dodson Dec 2011

Rethinking Extraordinary Circumstances, Scott Dodson

Scott Dodson

This short essay seeks to rationalize the "extraordinary circumstances" doctrine of Rue 60(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The usual rule is that a movant for Rule 60(b)(6) relief must show extraordinary circumstances for that relief. Under the Ackermann rule (so named after the Supreme Court decision that spawned it), courts have held that any extraordinary circumstances cannot have been caused by the movant's own litigation conduct. I argue that the Ackermann rule, at its broadest, would be unjust to those litigants most in need of Rule 60(b)(6) relief and would overserve finality interests. I propose, instead, that …

Go to article

Structuring Jurisdictional Rules And Standards, Scott Dodson, Elizabeth Mccuskey Dec 2011

Structuring Jurisdictional Rules And Standards, Scott Dodson, Elizabeth Mccuskey

Scott Dodson

This essay, for Vanderbilt Law Review En Banc, critically assesses Jonathan Remy Nash’s article, "On the Efficient Deployment of Rules and Standards to Define Federal Jurisdiction," which proposes to use rules to demarcate jurisdictional boundaries at the front end while "migrating" standards into a discretionary abstention phase at the back end. While we believe Nash's cause is worthy, and while we applaud his creativity, we think his proposal suffers from ambiguous definitions of “rules” and “standards” and assumes that clear and simple “rules” are actually attainable in jurisdictional doctrine. We also show that Nash's proposal works only with a broad …

Go to article

Presuit Discovery In A Comparative Context, Scott Dodson Dec 2011

Presuit Discovery In A Comparative Context, Scott Dodson

Scott Dodson

In civil litigation around the globe, the usual process is that investigative discovery is allowed (if at all) only after the plaintiff files an initial pleading. Recently, however, a growing number of jurisdictions have adopted general mechanisms for presuit investigative discovery. This paper explores these mechanisms and probes their nature and importance. It first finds that presuit investigative discovery is surprisingly prevalent among common-law systems, despite the usual order of pleading and discovery. The paper then argues that presuit investigative discovery can provide a useful tool for enabling plaintiffs to file a sufficient complaint in fact-pleading jurisdictions. Finally, the paper …

Go to article

A New Look At Dismissal Rates In Federal Civil Cases, Scott Dodson Dec 2011

A New Look At Dismissal Rates In Federal Civil Cases, Scott Dodson

Scott Dodson

In the wake of Twombly and Iqbal, a number of studies have been conducted to determine their effects on dismissal practice in federal civil cases. However, because of coding and collection difficulties, those studies have tended to code whole cases rather than claims--leading to the ambiguous coding category of “mixed” dismissals and to problems in characterizing the nature of the dispute--and have failed to distinguish between legal sufficiency and factual sufficiency, potentially masking important detail about the effects of the pleadings changes.

This paper begins to fill in that detail. I compiled an original dataset of district court opinions and …

Go to article