Civil Procedure: Doctrine, Practice, and Context, Seventh Edition

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Written by respected scholars and experienced educators, this book showcases rules and doctrine of civil procedure at work in the practice of law. The book focuses on civil rights both to engage student’s by focusing on issues they care about and to illustrate the impact of procedure on real people’s experience with the legal system. The cases are framed in their historical and social context. Each chapter contains a well-written introduction, cases, and clear explanations of the doctrine, supported by readings highlighting the context of the case as well as review questions and comments which deepen students’ understanding and clarify key concepts, and offers more than forty well-crafted problems (both for class use and review), to help students solidify their understanding of the materials whether used in class or as out-of-class assignments. In-class exercises and simulations based on a sample case file are integrated throughout. Pleadings, memoranda, transcripts, exhibits, motions, and more – all taken from a real case – appear in the Appendix. Civil Procedure: Doctrine, Practice, and Context consistently emphasizes the skills and values of lawyering as it offers a consideration of social responsibility.

New to the 7th Edition:

• The inclusion of more examples and problem sets to make the materials more accessible and the concepts more concrete
• The addition of more practice exercises, with a focus on one set of Case Files throughout the book, rather than the two that were used in prior editions
• With the removal of Warner v. City of New York case files (because most professors did not have time to use the Warner case files into their courses), issues that are unique to public law litigation are woven throughout the book with practice problems, examples, comments, and questions. This revision will make it easier for professors to incorporate these issues into the course.

Professors and students will benefit from:

• Practice exercises allow students to learn by doing – integrating doctrine, practice, and context. These exercises can be covered in class or, instead, recommended as content for study groups.
• Topics that are especially hard to teach (like discovery) and those that require a lot of time to teach have been rewritten to respond to adopters’ requests.
• A case file involving a car accident that is both accessible to first year students and provides good teaching tools for procedure professors to show how a case is litigated from complaint through trial. Because the case file involves a relatively simple state court case, it provides an opportunity to compare state and federal procedural regimes.
• Review questions focus on student comprehension; broader critical questions are separated out in “questions to ponder” sections. Questions are answered in the teacher’s manual.
• Background material has been integrated to promote critical thinking and engage students with the latest debates over civil procedure. New practice problems promote engagement with cutting edge issues like Multidistrict Litigation. 
• The authors are developing an online community for adopters – in addition to the teacher’s manual -- to help better facilitate the learning and teaching process for this book.