My colleague Scott Dodson has built himself a prominent place in American jurisdiction law, in a series of articles on personal jurisdiction and subject–matter jurisdiction. He’s also been carving out a niche in comparative civil procedure. In “Personal Jurisdiction in Comparative Context,” forthcoming in the refereed American Journal of Comparative Law, Professor Dodson combines his… Continue reading →
My colleague Rick Marcus, a longtime leader in both domestic and comparative civil procedure, has published two articles. The first, “Treading Water? Current Procedural Issues in America,” 23 ZZPInt 183 (2018), reports on U.S. procedural developments of some interest to scholars in other countries, including class-action rule reform, personal jurisdiction, discovery, arbitration, and third-party litigation… Continue reading →
The creation of the federal courts was an exercise in nation-building. Delegates to the Constitutional Convention worried that unduly expansive federal jurisdiction would suggest mistrust of, and eventually eclipse, state courts. An elusive quest to ensure impartiality pulled in the opposite direction, with the specter of state-court bias against out-of-state defendants animating the desire to… Continue reading →
As all lawyers remember fondly from civil procedure, personal jurisdiction under the modern “minimum contacts” approach protects defendants from being haled into remote forums with which they have no substantial connection. It normally has no significance for plaintiffs. Plaintiffs, after all, consent to litigation in the forum by bringing suit there. But is that always… Continue reading →
My colleague Scott Dodson is the most prominent American civil-procedure scholar of his generation addressing comparative-procedure issues. One recognition of his status is that he is the youngest American elected to membership in the International Association of Procedural Law. Another is that he was invited to serve as National Reporter for the U.S. in connection… Continue reading →
My colleague Professor Rick Marcus, who has distinguished himself in procedure circles not just in the U.S. but also quite prominently abroad, has posted a new book chapter titled “Reassessing the Essential Role of the Public Courts: Learning from the American Experience.” The book is focused on the public role of courts from a comparative… Continue reading →
In a new Northwestern University Law Review article titled “Personal Jurisdiction and Aggregation,” my colleague Scott Dodson unpacks how jurisdiction, preclusion, and joinder doctrines together enable aggregation, and highlights the increasing role played by personal-jurisdiction doctrine as a constraint. This article is a welcome addition to the literature that highlights and ties together Professor Dodson’s… Continue reading →
America seems mired in a highly partisan and polarized political era. The truth is that we have been so for some time, and that the polarization has infected the most apolitical of legal subjects: civil procedure. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure have always been adventuresome, at least in the eyes of the rest of… Continue reading →
Scott Dodson is rightly regarded as “Mr. Jurisdiction” among American legal academics. He has written a spate of articles about many different jurisdictional issues that establish him as the leading authority of his generation on these subjects. In Jurisdiction in the Trump Era, a contribution to a symposium with Fordham Law Review, he draws on this expertise to… Continue reading →
My colleague Scott Dodson has established himself as one of the country’s leading civil procedure scholars by tackling some of the subject’s trickiest puzzles. In a recent article in the Georgetown Law Journal called “Jurisdiction and Its Effects,” Professor Dodson has done it again, training his sights on the vexed subject of jurisdiction. Professor Dodson… Continue reading →
