This course provides an introduction to civil legal process. We will focus on legal thinking, rules and processes of civil procedure and dispute resolution, and professionalism and ethics. After a short introduction to the legal system, pleadings, and some theories of procedure, we will consider the rules, statutes, and common-law doctrines governing parties and proceedings in three stages. First we will discuss the grounds on which parties and claims may be heard or excluded as a threshold matter. This section of the course deals with standing, justiciability, intervention, limitation periods, and relitigation. Next, we will discuss strategic interaction in the course of litigation. This section of the course deals with jurisdiction, preliminary relief, discovery, confidentiality, and summary judgment. Last, we will discuss perhaps the most revolutionary form of litigation to emerge in the last century—class proceedings, which provide a means of addressing certain harms for which conventional litigation is inappropriate. The focus, during all of these discussions, will be on the rationales for the rules, standards, and doctrines that govern legal procedure, in light of the various interests that must be accommodated: the plaintiff’s desire to be heard, the defendant’s wish to avoid needless litigation, the efforts of non-parties to have their interests represented, the needs of potential future litigants to have the law clearly set out on the basis of accurate information, and the public’s demand for an effective and efficient system. Not all of these demands can be accommodated at the same time. We will discuss the rationales for the current system and the potential for reform.
This course will include an intensive week on Legal Ethics and Professionalism. The intensive week will bring together the entire first-year class and esteemed members of the profession to discuss professionalism and various ethical issues. During this week, all other classes will be suspended, except for students’ small groups (which will be re-scheduled to Monday morning).
