Civil Procedure, A Contemporary Approach

The 5th Edition of Civil Procedure: A Contemporary Approach is designed to provide a clear and actively engaging presentation of civil procedure in a manner that enables both students and professors to assess learning success throughout the course.

The Fifth Edition fully incorporates the 2015 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, as well as a few case law developments since the 2015 publication date of the Revised Fourth Edition. Two particularly noteworthy new cases that are included in this edition are the Supreme Court’s personal jurisdiction decisions in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court, 137 S. Ct. 1773 (2017) (elaborating on specific jurisdiction), and BNSF Railway Co. v. Tyrrell, 137 S. Ct. 1549 (2017) (remarking on general jurisdiction). This edition, like the one that preceded it, integrates references to online assessment tools in the CasebookPlus™ platform. These consist of a bank of 300 multiple-choice questions that provide comprehensive assessment of the topics covered in this book, with detailed feedback consisting of explanations for both correct and incorrect responses. This feature provides an unparalleled opportunity to engage with the material actively as the course progresses and permits students and professors to determine the extent to which the material is being learned. The bank of questions also serve as excellent preparation for the civil procedure component of the Multistate Bar Exam, which was added to the MBE in February 2015. Finally, in what is a significant change, the material pertaining to notice and service of process are removed from Chapters 2 and 6, respectively, and consolidated into a new Chapter 2. Personal jurisdiction, which previously made up Chapter 2, is redesignated as Chapter 1 (former Chapter 1 is now an “Overview”).