Updated to include a contemporary perspective, this popular classic casebook covers important developments in several areas of civil procedure and incorporates student and professor comments on previous editions. While it retains a focus on procedural evolution, the new ninth edition also discusses cutting-edge issues, such as transnational litigation and technology's effect on jurisdictional doctrine. To make way for new material, this edition abbreviates a few older cases and commentaries and streamlines some notes.
Listen. I couldn't finish my 2023 reading challenge because of this one 1300-page book. It took up my entire life. It took up every last drop of every last cell of me. It's a good book. Or maybe I'm just forced to say that because of the Stockholm Syndrome I must be feeling.
I'll say it because it needs to be said: Another casebook on civil procedure? In a genre that is overflowing with similar offerings, one must really ask if the authors have anything new, or distinctive, to say on the matter. Nevertheless, it would be foolish to blame only Friedenthal, Miller, Sexton, and Hershkoff: Like the audiences of dreary sequels to 'Saw,' law students keep lapping up these page-turners year after year after year. And for that reason--combined with the enormously high cover price, which will put any new '3-D' film to shame, 'Shark Night' or no--one must suspect that the introductory civil procedure casebooks will keep coming.
I took CivPro from Arthur Miller, and the supposed difficulty of CivPro was non-existent for me. Arthur Miller has a way of distilling complex rules into easy-to-memorize bullet points and logic flows. To this day, I can still remember some of the case names and what their holdings are, and I don't even practice law!! I can't imagine a better CivPro casebook than this one. If your CivPro professor uses this book, consider yourself lucky.
Alright, so I'm pretty biased because Civ Pro is just not my thing. Some of the cases were "interesting" I guess, but throughout the semester it became harder and harder to understand the material while only relying on the casebook. I get that a big part of that is because the Supreme Court blows when it comes to making majority decisions in these cases, but the Notes & Questions sections didn't seem to help much either.
Wanna know the ins and outs of civil procedure in the American legal system? Go join a law firm. Wanna cram the basics of civil procedure in your head over the course of a few months and try to regurgitate it on an exam? Then maybe this book is for you.