Toward A New Federalism in State Civil Justice: Developing a Uniform Code of State Civil Procedure Through a Collaborative Rule-Making Process

The federal rules of civil procedure were intended by their drafters to be a model for states to adopt, thereby promoting national procedural uniformity. From 1949 through 1975, federal procedure exerted a powerful influence

This Article proposes that the next great wave of procedural reform in American civil justice emanate from the states themselves in the form of a national code of state civil procedure. The willingness of states to chart their own paths toward civil justice reform presents both a problem and an opportunity. The problem-especially for parties who litigate on a national scale-is a crazy quilt of procedures that promote forum shopping, which can unfairly affect substantive outcomes. The ferment of experimentation among state jurisdictions, however, also presents an opportunity-the chance to produce a better national civil procedure than the Federal Rules now afford and to create a collaborative state rule-making process, grounded in a system of controlled rules experimentation, which may serve as a model for federal rule-makers.