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Rhee, Remco van --- "Civil Procedure in a Globalizing World" [2010] ELECD 296; in Faure, Michael; van der Walt, André (eds), "Globalization and Private Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: Globalization and Private Law

Editor(s): Faure, Michael; van der Walt, André

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848447608

Section: Chapter 10

Section Title: Civil Procedure in a Globalizing World

Author(s): Rhee, Remco van

Number of pages: 22

Extract:

10. Civil procedure in a globalizing
world
Remco van Rhee

1 INTRODUCTION
At the start of the 21st century, the world's civil procedural landscape is
diverse. The main origin of diversity can be found in the historical differences
in the approach to civil litigation in the Common Law and Civil Law families
of procedural law.1 However, even within these families the differences have
become considerable, and it has been stated that because of that, the
dichotomy between Civil Law and Common Law may soon have lost much of
its relevance.2 An obvious example of major differences within one family can
be seen when comparing England and Wales (shortly `England' below) and the
United States of America. In England, the jury has nearly disappeared from
civil trials,3 whereas the right to a jury trial is a constitutional right in the US.4
Also, the role of pre-trial discovery (currently known as disclosure in England)
is radically different in these two jurisdictions. Whereas discovery in the US
is extremely extensive, at least from a European perspective,5 stringent limits
have been introduced in England by the Woolf Reforms (1999).6 At the same
time, it seems that occasionally the differences between jurisdictions from



1 For example, van Caenegem (1973) Chapter 2; Van Rhee (2005a).
2 Andrews (2009): `This project also shows that a jurisdiction's historical asso-
ciation with the Common Law or Civil Law tradition is not an immutable genetic
stamp. Arguably, this backward-looking distinction ...