Schedule Registration Housing

Saturday, January 8, 2000 10:30 a.m.-12:15 p.m.	Maryland Suite B & C Marriott Wardman Park Hotel Lobby Level
Section on Civil Procedure
Doug Rendleman, Washington & Lee University, Chair

Civil Procedure in the 21st Century

(Program to be published in Notre Dame Law Review)

Moderator:
	Doug Rendleman, Washington & Lee University
Speakers:
	Paul D. Carrington, Duke University Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr., University of Pennsylvania Linda S. Mullenix, University of Texas
Commentators:
	John D. Aldock, Esquire, Shea & Gardner, Washington, D.C. Mary Brigid McManamon, Widener University David C. Vladeck, Director, Public Citizen Litigation Group, Washington, D.C., and Georgetown University

For our program in 2000 the Section will set the crystal ball on the table and peer in at the megatrends—Civil Procedure in the 21st century. We have, after the universal fashion of proceduralists, divided our topic into three subtopics, to wit, the computer, international disputes, and complex litigation. Our guides into the brave new century will be three savants well-steeped in the procedural world of the twentieth century, Professors Carrington, Hazard, and Mullenix, each of whom has already staked out a position on the respective subtopics.

Professor Carrington, who from 1985 to 1992 was Reporter for the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules, wrote in "Virtual Civil Litigation: A Visit to John Bunyan's Celestial City," 98 Colum. L. Rev. 1516 (1998), "The institutions of civil litigation are, however, headed for fundamental change caused by the invention of the computer chip. The digitization of information offers technical solutions to problems that have long defied us." Wonderful, but one consequence will be "a judicial law reformer who threatens to disemploy much of his profession."

Professor Hazard, who was director of the American Law Institute and is now co-reporter of the ALI's project on Transnational Rules of Civil Procedure where he pursues his quest for harmonization, was also talking about us when he wrote, "The procedural system that is most aberrant—i.e., most distinctive compared with the civil procedure systems of modern nations in general—is the system that applies in U.S. trial courts of general jurisdiction. For this reason, the problem of harmonization of civil procedure can be considered to be primarily a U.S. problem." "Preliminary Draft of the ALI Transnational Rules of Civil Procedure," 33 Tex. Int'l L.J. 489 (1998).

In her Monsanto Lecture at Valparaiso Law School, Professor Mullenix maintained that Professor Chayes's judge-centered "public law paradigm" of complex litigation is obsolete. "[L]ittle of mass tort litigation actually is filtered through judicial process. The modern mass tort paradigm instead involves the wholesale resolution of aggregate private claims through private auspices without the significant involvement of the very people whose claims are being resolved in wholesale fashion. Thus, the mass tort paradigm resembles more closely private legislation implemented through private administrative means but sanctioned with a judicial imprimatur." "Resolving Aggregate Mass Tort Litigation: The New Private Law Dispute Resolution Paradigm," 33 Val.U.L. Rev. 413 (1999).

Commentators will follow the three principal speakers. They will include Professor Vladeck and Mr. Aldock, a mass tort specialist. Are professors part of the problem or part of the solution? Well, in 1900 when this century began, law schools didn't have any courses in civil procedure. Professor McManamon, who has written an outstanding article on the history of the civil procedure course, will tell us what the next century holds for the way we teach and learn civil procedure.

Business Meeting at Program Conclusion

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