The Excessive History of Federal Rule 15(c) and its Lessons for Civil Rules Revision

This case study of one Federal Rule of Civil Procedure is designed to suggest affirmative answers to these questions. My focus is on the surprisingly extensive body of case law, culminating in the Supreme Court\u27s 1986 decision in Schiavone v. Fortune, that parses the second sentence of Federal Rule 15(c). Added in 1966, that sentence attempts to set standards for the relation back of party-changing amendments to pleadings. A more prototypically pedestrian, less prepossessing topic of the traditionalist type could scarcely be imagined. Yet a review of its history brings larger points into sharp relief: something is seriously amiss in our Federal Rules amending process, and the costs of stasis are high. Part I briefly surveys the respective areas of responsibility for federal civil rulemaking that the Court and the Congress have exercised since the Rules\u27 adoption in 1938. Part II is an extended review, in five sections, of the history of rule 15(c) before and, most tellingly, after its amendment in 1966. Part III, returning to the roles of the Court and the Congress, considers the lessons of the history of rule 15(c) for the rules-revision process

A Brave New World for Personal Jurisdiction: Flexible Tests Under Uniform Standards

This Article accepts the challenge to unify personal jurisdiction theory by proposing an approach that accommodates both the contacts-based and noncontacts-based tests under uniform jurisdictional standards. The analysis builds on the major assumption,elaborated in part II, that the Supreme Court\u27s decision in Insurance Corp. of Ireland v. Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinee removed the principal barrier to a unified theory by ousting governmental interests from their long held place in personal jurisdiction decisions. The principal thesis is that International Shoe has made two general, lasting contributions to jurisdictional theory.First, International Shoe recognized, although less clearly than Ireland, that the goal of due process in personal jurisdiction is to assure a forum that is fair to the parties, including the plaintiff, rather than one that furthers forum state interests or vague notions of state sovereignty. Second, International Shoe implicitly identified two comprehensive standards or criteria--described here as expectation and benefit -for measuring a forum\u27s fairness to the parties. These broad criteria should replace the opinion\u27s familiar minimum contacts tests as the real standards of International Shoe that Shaffer prescribed for universal application. Under this analysis the particularized contacts tests are simply useful, nonexhaustive surrogates for the expectation or benefit yardsticks that should be the ultimate measures of fairness to the parties. Part II surveys the current contacts-based and noncontacts-based tests of jurisdiction and describes how those tests serve the two general fairness standards. The expectation standard inquires retrospectively whether a reasonable person in the defendant\u27s position should be surprised by having to defend a particular claim in the plaintiff\u27s chosen forum. The benefit standard asks whether, apart from the defendant\u27s expectations, the benefit he has derived from his forum-related activities justifies requiring him to defend in the forum any claim--even one wholly unrelated to those activities. Part III proposes four modifications to the existing contacts tests so that these tests might serve as more reliable indicators of the determinative criteria of expectation and benefit. The first modification is explicit recognition of a plaintiff\u27s due process interest in the jurisdictional question. In virtually all cases, however,the proposed interest is limited to situations in which the plaintiff would have to bring multiple suits if the forum could not assert jurisdiction over all of the defendants. The second suggested modification is assignment of jurisdictional significance to all the defendant\u27s forum contacts, regardless of when he made them. By concentrating on the defendant\u27s historical forum contacts, classical contacts analysis has failed to take into account the benefits a defendant has reaped after the events giving rise to litigation;it also has ignored the possible relevance of the defendant\u27s con-duct after the start of litigation to his expectations about place of suit. Third, for certain claims against multiple foreign defendants with similar defenses, contacts analysis should consider whether each defendant needs to appear to protect his interests. The plain-tiff may have to fragment his claim if the forum lacks jurisdiction over any one defendant. To avoid this consequence, the forum should be able to assert jurisdiction even over defendants with no forum contacts, if other defendants actually defending in the forum well represent the absent defendants\u27 interests. Fourth, be-cause the minimum contacts tests are merely indicators of broader fairness criteria, courts should be free to exercise jurisdiction based on a blending of claim-related and nonclaim-related contacts. Thus, independently insufficient claim-related and nonclaim-related contacts, considered together, may warrant jurisdiction under a more fundamental rationale of expectation or benefit. In part IV this Article evaluates the constitutional validity of eleven particularized noncontacts-based tests under this proposed framework. Only one of these satellite tests clearly is incompatible with the two fairness criteria. The others gain renewed theoretical justification from their consistency with the reformulated contacts tests or with the broader criteria of expectation or benefit

Of Offers Not (Frequently) Made and (Rarely) Accepted: The Mystery of Federal Rule 68

This Symposium brings together, from around the nation, eight civil rights and employment discrimination lawyers, four legal academics, and an eminent federal judge, all with deep experience and interest in the promise and pitfalls of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 68. We gather to unravel a mystery. In an oversimplified nutshell, Rule 68, as construed, enables the defendants to say to the plaintiffs in employment discrimination and civil rights cases: If you don\u27t beat my offer at trial, you forfeit your right to any future statutory attorney fees. Rule 68 would, therefore, appear to give the defendants a significant incentive to make offers and to give the plaintiffs a significant incentive to accept them. Yet, the rule is seldom used. The mystery is why

Assessment of the present and potential role of weather modification in agricultural production

August 1975.Includes bibliographical references.The Workshop for an Assessment of the Present and Potential Role of Weather Modification in Agricultural Production, Colorado State University, 1975, was held at CSU, July 15-18, 1975.Sponsored by RANN, NSF