Jurisdiction in the Trump Era

The election of Donald Trump as President of the United States induced immediate speculation about how his tenure would affect various areas of the law. In civil-procedure circles, the intuition is that his status as a probusiness, antiregulation Republican seems likely to push procedural doctrine generally in pro-defendant directions. That intuition seems sound in the specific procedural subtopic of jurisdictional doctrine relating to forum selection. In this Essay, I document recent pre-Trump, pro-defendant trends in personal jurisdiction and diversity jurisdiction, and I detail how those trends impose significant burdens on plaintiffs. I then explain why the remainder of Trump’s presidency is likely to entrench those trends through judicial appointments, rulemaker stasis, and congressional efforts. The result is likely to be less an alteration of pre-Trump law than a reinforcement and expansion of it

The Complexity of Jurisdictional Clarity

The ideal of clear and simple jurisdictional rules seems like a no-brainer. Clarity in areas of subject-matter jurisdiction generally reduces the cost of litigating those issues and thus preserves litigant and judicial resources for the merits of a dispute. As a result, scholars and justices regularly promote the rhetoric of jurisdictional clarity. Yet no one has probed that rhetoric or reconciled it with the reality of subject-matter jurisdiction doctrine, which is anything but clear and simple. This Article begins to fill that gap, and, in the process, shifts the perspective of existing conversations between rules and standards and between mandates and discretion toward a perspective that focuses on the value and attainability of clarity. It offers a more refined understanding of the surprising uncertainty and complexity of jurisdictional clarity, and it argues that, contrary to the rhetoric, the ideal of jurisdictional clarity is mostly illusory. Difficulties inherent in the design, implementation, and instrumental direction of clear and simple jurisdictional rules largely render them unattainable. Rather than continue to invoke the unexamined ideal of clarity and simplicity, jurisdictional doctrine should strive to confine clarity to what it can reasonably accomplish and to embrace the undervalued virtues of uncertainty and complexity

Comparative Convergences in Pleading Standards

Comparative civil procedure has had little influence in American jurisprudence and commentary, in part because of American procedure\u27s deep and widespread exceptionalism. But this may be changing, at least in certain areas. The American notice pleading standard, for example, which has long been considered exceptional, shows signs of trending toward the fact pleading models of foreign countries. Congressional experimentation with heightened pleading in statutes such as the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act and the Supreme Court\u27s recent pronouncements in Iqbal v. Ashcroft and Bell Atlantic v. Twombly suggest that American pleading jurisprudence is moving away from its traditionally exceptionalist corner and towards a regime focused on facts that is more akin to the global norm. If so, then this trend may allow for more meaningful transnational dialogue between the U.S. and foreign systems, more valuable comparative analyses in the U.S., and the potential to harmonize civil procedure across national boundaries

Justice Souter and the Civil Rules

Justice Souter’s recent retirement from the Court after nearly twenty years presents a unique opportunity to comment on his legacy. No doubt others will eulogize or castigate him for his membership in the Planned Parenthood v. Casey troika, but there is much more to the man and his jurisprudence. Indeed, the danger is that Justice Souter will be pigeonholed into one opinion, an opinion that he wrote early in his Supreme Court career, to the detriment of understanding the complex justice that he was. And what it finds is a justice deeply committed to the fair treatment of the litigants that come before him. That trait says much about David Souter, both the justice and the man

The Challenge of Comparative Civil Procedure

This Essay reviews Civil Litigation in Comparative Context (West 2007), by Oscar G. Chase, Helen Hershkoff, Linda Silberman, Yasuhei Taniguchi, Vincenzo Varano, and Adrian Zuckerman. It also identifies some areas of exceptionalist American civil procedure that recently have been converging towards global norms and argues that those convergences, if they continue, could render comparative studies particularly meaningful

Rethinking Extraordinary Circumstances

This short essay for Northwestern University Law Review\u27s Colloquy 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\u27s 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 the Ackermann rule apply more narrowly: only to movants who have intentionally abandoned their litigation

The Importance of E-Discovery

This short essay explores the increasing importance of e-discovery to litigants in both federal and state courts in Arkansas