Civil Procedure

Civil Procedure concerns the rules and practices governing civil litigation. We will begin by discussing the structure of the federal and state judicial system and the constitutional principles that undergird the procedural rules. We will then spend much of our class time examining the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), the body of federal law that lays out the procedures for bringing and defending a civil action in federal court. To better understand how the rules work in practice, the class will draft a simple complaint (the document that initiates litigation), a simple answer (the response to a complaint), and a set of questions to be asked during the discovery process. We will also read other federal statutes, legal filings, and court decisions that further elaborate on the meaning of these rules and the values underlying the civil justice system. Like the rest of your classes, this course is intended to teach you not only about a substantive area of the law, but also skills of interpretation and analysis that you will need to apply to most legal issues. We will spend a significant percentage of our class time parsing and applying the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which will assist you in learning the skill of statutory interpretation. We will also spend considerable time reading judicial decisions and discussing how the legal principles articulated in those opinions can be applied and extended to future cases by analogy. These skills are transferable, and will assist you not only in mastering the procedural rules governing civil litigation, but also in making legal arguments in all areas of the law.