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In 1980 the Supreme Court of Florida adopted comprehensive amendments to the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure. The author critically examines these amendments and discusses their probable impact on civil practice in Florida. The author also surveys and discusses the 1980 legislation and court decisions that have affected or construed the unamended rules.

The author surveys and discusses recent decisions, rule changes and legislation concerning various aspects of Florida Civil Procedure. The topics dealt with include jurisdiction, venue, class actions, parties, discovery, judgments, summary judgment, jury trials, jury instructions and dismissal.

A "global" civil procedure has emerged and found its way into debates over procedural reform in both international and domestic arenas. Global civil procedure includes the procedural rules, practices, and social understandings that govern transnational litigation and arbitration. A global civil procedure norm is a norm adopted across courts or arbitration providers with the purpose of making that jurisdiction or provider more competitive in attracting transnational litigation or arbitration. Global civil procedure norms are at stake in multiple present trends and debates, including model laws in commercial arbitration, the procedure of international tribunals, the debate over investment dispute resolution, the rise of courts oriented towards international litigation, and sprawling litigation spanning multiple jurisdictions and fora. On a surface level, the values reflected in global civil procedure seem to be roughly the same across jurisdictions. A common language has emerged around competition for litigation business and procedure values such as efficiency, certainty, and impartiality. Yet different legal systems do not necessarily agree on the purpose of various shared elements of global civil procedure. For democracies, for instance, the purpose of procedural reforms might be to facilitate access to justice. Other countries may favor the same reforms because they facilitate top-down administrative control of judges. Surface agreement can submerge divergent logics that may ultimately lead to very different applications of harmonized rules. This Article begins by introducing the concept of global civil procedure, who uses it, and how. Next, it considers several examples of the phenomenon including conflicts of interest rules for adjudicators, aggregation, and discovery or disclosure rules. Finally, it considers the limits of global civil procedure. Although the rhetoric of procedural competition can be heard across systems, procedural values do not necessarily translate both in terms of enduring divisions between legal traditions and in terms of applications by current political regimes.

This Article argues that the current era of U.S. civil procedure is defined by its neoliberalism. The Supreme Court has over the past few decades reinterpreted the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in ways that have made it more difficult for citizens to bring and maintain civil claims. The major decisions of this new era—in areas as diverse as summary judgment, pleading, class actions, and arbitration—exhibit neoliberal hallmarks. They display neoliberalism's tendency to naturalize existing market arrangements, its focus on efficiency and obscuring questions of power, its reduction of citizens to consumers, and its attempt to analyze government through the lens of market-modeled concepts. As the Court's procedural decisions make it increasingly difficult for citizens to bring claims enforcing regulatory law—including antitrust, antidiscrimination, consumer protection, and worker protection laws—the Court's neoliberal orientation lurks in the background and helps to explain procedure's modern progression. In order to fully appreciate, critique, and potentially move beyond the current era of U.S. civil procedure, it is important to understand the neoliberal logic that drives it, as well as the logics and values it obscures and sidelines.