Civil Procedure Commons^™

Rules & Laws For Civil Actions: 2025 Ed., Stella Burch Elias, Derek T. Muller, Jason Rantanen, Caroline Sheerin, Maya Steinitz

Books

Rules and Laws for Civil Actions is an open-access resource for law students containing the U.S. Constitution, Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Federal Rules of Evidence, Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, and selected federal and state statutes. The book was created by a team of faculty members at the University of Iowa College of Law to supplement the study of Civil Procedure, Evidence, Constitutional Law, and other law school courses. In addition to containing the official text, each legal source found in Rules and Laws for Civil Actions is accompanied by an introductory section written by an Iowa Law professor …

Regulating Forever?: The Epa's Goal To Remediate Forever Chemicals Already In The Environment Under The Safe Drinking Water Act, Anna Donaldson

UMKC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Sect And Superstition: The Protestant Framework Of American Codification, Kellen R. Funk

Faculty Scholarship

Elite lawyers who debated codification in the nineteenth-century United States treated codification as inseparable from a liberal Protestant textualism that had taken hold in the early national era. Legislators declared codification to be the necessary final step of the Protestant Reformation and frequently characterized common law lawyers as beholden to ‘superstition’ and ‘priestcraft’. Their opponents denounced the codifiers’ idea that texts alone could adequately convey common meanings and delighted to point out the endlessly fracturing glosses on supposedly ‘clear’ texts that divided the positivists into an ever-increasing number of sects.

Many works have addressed the relationship between populism and positivism …

Standing And Probabilistic Injury, Curtis A. Bradley, Ernest A. Young

Michigan Law Review

Standing to sue often turns on questions of probability. For example, public law plaintiffs must show that they are likely to be affected by allegedly unlawful government surveillance or environmental policies, and consumers may wish to sue private defendants over false credit reporting or data breaches that may or may not cause them financial or reputational harm in the future. This Article offers a framework for resolving a wide range of these “probabilistic standing” issues. Our core claim is that courts and commentators ask too much of standing doctrine in probabilistic cases. First, scholars sometimes seek a unified theory of …

The Modern Energizer Bunny - Hopping Into The Nuclear Energy Revolution: The Tenth Circuit's Analysis In New Mexico Ex Rel. Balderas V. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Jack A. Mansur

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Houston, We Have A Problem: The D.C. Circuit Closes Pathway To National Judicial Review In Sierra Club V. Environmental Protection Agency, Alison O. Moyer

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

The Erosion Of Judicial Discretion: Why Congress And The Court Should Curb Restrictions For Bankruptcy Judges, Mason Spedding

BYU Law Review

This Note argues that reducing bankruptcy courts’ discretionary powers is a policy mistake because broad-sweeping legislation cannot adequately account for every circumstance presented by debtors. Bankruptcy is a unique field of law that requires unique rules; unlike a purely uniform bankruptcy system that is inherently over- and under-inclusive, a system of judiciously broad discretionary powers enables bankruptcy courts to find the optimal solutions to new issues on a case-by-case basis. Rather than restricting the discretionary powers of bankruptcy judges, Congress should enact a set of standards for judges to consider when evaluating individual cases. Under this system, judges would be …

Trying Out The Electronic Case Management System In The Uae And Its Compliance With Fundamental Judicial Guarantees, Abdulla A. Alkhatib

An-Najah University Journal for Research - B (Humanities)

This study considers the Electronic Case Management System (ECMS) and the challenges it faces in achieving basic litigation guarantees, according to the legislation of the UAE, and comparing them with the practices followed by the judicial authorities. The importance of the study lies in the fact that electronic justice has replaced the traditional justice system, where all procedures from registering the case, submitting memoranda, conducting trials, issuing judgments, appealing, and implementing them are carried out through it remotely. This raised the question about the extent to which ECMS provides basic litigation guarantees, specifically the principles of equality, confrontation, defense, and …

A Toothless Tcpa: An Analysis Of Article Iii Standing, Personal Jurisdiction, And The Disjuncture Problem’S Impact On The Efficacy Of The Telephone Consumer Protection Act, Sebastian W. Johnson

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Missing Links: Why Hyperlinks Must Be Treated As Attachments In Electronic Discovery, Lea Malani Bays, Stuart A. Davidson

University of Cincinnati Law Review

This Article sheds light on a unique but centrally important “twenty-first century” issue involving electronic discovery in federal civil litigation that is just beginning to percolate in federal district courts. Historically, courts have held that a document attached to or enclosed with another document must be produced together when produced in response to a discovery request, as that is how the document was “kept in the usual course of business” and how it is “ordinarily maintained or in a reasonably usable form,” as the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure have required for decades. Today, parties are pushing back on whether …

Unintended Consequences: The New Test For Interlocutory Mandatory Injunctions, Jeff Berryman

Brooklyn Law Review

Interlocutory mandatory injunctions can be an important remedy during the pendency of a trial. With its decision in R. v. Canadian Broadcasting Corp, the Supreme Court of Canada revised its test for an interlocutory mandatory injunction, holding that it should require a higher threshold and be therefore harder to obtain than an interlocutory prohibitive injunction. This higher threshold requires that the applicant demonstrate a strong prima facie case that it will succeed at trial based on law and evidence. This change adds uncertainty to the process, ultimately complicating and adding costs to litigation.

Nonparty Litigation Holds: Clear To Implement. Complex To Lift., Alexis Bianco-Burrill

Brooklyn Law Review

Legal holds have long been used by parties, and nonparties alike, as a fundamental tool to preserve information that could be needed in litigation. There are a breadth of statutes, case law, and scholarly work clarifying when a party has the duty to preserve documents and therefore issues legal holds under federal law, as well as when nonparties share this same duty. Although the question of when to issue a legal hold has a clear answer, the problem of when a nonparty can lift a litigation hold is much more complex. Often, nonparties who have been requested to preserve documents …

No Sword, No Shield, No Problem: Ai In Pro Se Section 1983 Suits, Michaela Calhoun

University of Colorado Law Review Forum

Originating during the Reconstruction era, 42 U.S.C. 1983 emerged as a legislative tool to safeguard individuals’ constitutional rights and liberties. Initially designed to combat state-sanctioned violence, its efficacy has been eroded over time by subsequent judicial and legislative action. Unfortunately, the current state of Section 1983 falls short of this envisioned role, particularly for incarcerated individuals who find themselves navigating the complexities of the federal court system as pro se litigants.

Faced with a landscape devoid of resources, incarcerated individuals struggle to realize their constitutional rights, further perpetuating their collective status as a second-class citizenry—a status imposed by their own …

Graduare Property Development Limited V A & J Interiors Limited Appeal No. 253/2023, Clement Ngoma

SAIPAR Case Review

This case underscores the importance of courts adhering to the well-established principle that issues not raised during the trial cannot be introduced as grounds of appeal. In this judgment, the Court of Appeal had an opportunity to clarify the legal implications of the non-registration of lease agreements, but it also highlighted the broader issue of raising legal points at any stage of proceedings, including on appeal. Despite the non-registration of the lease agreement, the Court of Appeal emphasized that such a legal issue could still be addressed during an appeal, reaffirming the flexibility of legal proceedings in protecting the rights …

Deepfakes Reach The Advisory Committee On Evidence Rules, Daniel J. Capra

Fordham Law Review

A number of articles have been written in the last couple of years about the evidentiary challenges posed by “deepfakes”—inauthentic videos and audios generated by artificial intelligence (AI) in such a way as to appear to be genuine. You are probably aware of some of the widely distributed examples, such as: (1) Pope Francis wearing a Balenciaga jacket; (2) Jordan Peele’s video showing President Barack Obama speaking and saying things that President Obama never said; (3) Nancy Pelosi speaking while appearing to be intoxicated; and (4) Robert DeNiro’s de-aging in The Irishman.

The evidentiary risk posed by deepfakes is …

Class Actions, Thomas M. Byrne, Stacey Mcgavin Mohr

Mercer Law Review

The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit’s 2023 class-action decisions continued to grapple with Article III standing requirements while also demonstrating, in two decisions, the court’s longstanding generally permissive posture toward approval of class-action settlements. A significant deviation from the latter tendency is the court’s increasingly isolated position on payment of incentive awards to class representatives. Alone among the circuits, the court prohibits such payments, creating an inter-circuit conflict that seems inevitably headed to the Supreme Court. In the meantime, within the circuit, class counsel face a unique hurdle in crafting settlements and dealing with class representatives.

Averting Plausibility Pleading’S Threats To Novel Fha Legal Claims, Tanya Pierce, Aric Short

Faculty Scholarship

Plausibility pleading requirements articulated by the U.S. Supreme Court in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal continue to confound even well-intentioned courts. But for courts inclined to avoid grappling with modern applications of existing law, they provide ideal camouflage: a way of relying on procedural justifications to ostensibly side-step substantive law decisions—while in effect creating de facto law that robs litigants of their day in court. These negative, unintended consequences of Twombly and Iqbal are vividly illustrated in recent federal litigation brought under the Fair Housing Act involving claims of landlord liability for tenant-on-tenant harassment.

This Article …

Rethinking Jurisdictional Maximalism In The Wake Of Mallory, Sayer Paige

Fordham Law Review

Jurisdiction-by-registration is the idea that by virtue of registering to do business in a state, corporations prospectively consent to jurisdiction on claims made against them in that state. For decades, this concept has stagnated behind the minimum contacts analysis developed by International Shoe Co. v. Washington and its progeny. Among other reasons, plaintiffs and states were not sure whether jurisdiction-by-registration withstood the Due Process Clause. But as the U.S. Supreme Court continued to narrow the limits of contacts-based jurisdiction, plaintiffs returned to registration based jurisdiction to recapture corporate defendants. Courts largely rejected these assertions. Then, in Mallory v. Norfolk Southern …

Symposium On Scholars’ Suggestions For Amendments, And Issues Raised By Artificial Intelligence

Fordham Law Review

CHAIR SCHILTZ: As those of you who have been in the rules work for a while know, rules work is cyclical. During the time I’ve been Chair of the Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules, we’ve had two packages of amendments that have gone through. The first package will take effect on December 1, 2024, and that’s the package that is led by the amendment to Rule 702 on expert testimony. And then we have another package that was just approved by the Judicial Conference and sent to the U.S. Supreme Court, and that package is led by the new rule …

The Case For A Canadian Panel On Multi-Jurisdictional Class Proceedings, Preston Jordan Lim, Justice William Hourigan

Faculty Publications

In Hryniak v Mauldin, the Supreme Court called for a cultural shift to promote timely and affordable access to the civil justice system in Canada. The failings of the civil justice system with respect to class proceedings are particularly troubling. The authors focus on multi-jurisdictional proceedings, which are procedurally complex and notoriously slow-moving, and on past efforts by the bar and bench to render these proceedings more efficient. For the most part, existing reform measures are discretionary, ad hoc, and premised on the consent of all the parties. Whereas cooperation is currently an option under the various reform measures, cooperation …