The basic plan of this much-revered casebook, Cases & Materials on Civil Procedure, is first to introduce readers to the nature of the judicial power itself and to basic issues of Congress's power over the jurisdiction, and then to follow the litigant's more or less in order through the federal courts.

This law school casebook covers important developments in several areas of civil procedure, and incorporates comments from users of previous editions. Significant changes have been made in the materials on class actions and alternative dispute resolution. The authors have looked for modern cases in which the facts are interesting, in which the conflicting policies seem to be in state of equilibrium, or in which the context has extrinsic fascination, rather than for cases in which the opinions offer tight little monographs on various aspects of procedure. The authors have concentrated on the operation of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

Chapter 2 and 3 spell out the basic contours of district - court jurisdiction in federal - question, admiralty, and diversity cases, with notes on venue and on the Supreme Court's original jurisdiction. Chapter 4 tells the student something about the applicable law governing federal proceedings, including remedies against government officers. Chapter 5 and 6 deal with limitations on the exercise of jurisdiction that cuts across the various jurisdictional categories: sovereign and official immunities a variety of statutory and judicial abstention doctrines. Chapter 7 follows the litigant into situations in which a federal court is asked to pass upon what another tribunal has already done.