FEDERAL RULES OF CIVIL PROCEDURE BY PALMER D. EDMUNDS OF THE ILLINOIS BAR FORMER COMMISSIONER OF THE SUPREME COURT OF ILLINOIS AUTHOR OF EDMUNDS COMMON LAW FORMS EDMUNDS CIVIL PRACTICE FORMS CO-AUTHOR OF DODD AND EDMUNDS ILLINOIS APPELLATE PROCEDURE IN TWO VOLUMES VOLUME 1 CHICAGO CALLAGHAN AND COMPANY Room Perhaps no event in history will serve to refute more conclusively the impression, apparently existent in some quarters, that the legal profession is opposed to salient reforms, than the promulgation of the Rules of Civil Procedure for the District Courts of the United States. These Rules, importing changes of far-reaching consequence calculated to expedite and simplify the administration of civil justice in our Federal courts, would never have been called into existence had it not been for the aggressive interest and activity of judges and lawyers over a period of many years. One who undertakes to prepare a work designed to assist the bench and bar to apply these Rules in every-day practice properly commences with the assurance, therefore, that they are making their debut in an altogether friendly atmosphere, and that all concerned are sincerely desirous of co-operating to the end that they may function in full accordance with the spirit in which they were drafted and adopted. No claim being made for their infallibility, it is assumed that any necessary changes of detail will be made as the need therefor is demonstrated by experience. Profound as are some of the changes which are thus being introduced, in one sense nothing new is presented. The avowed purpose of the framers has been to present a composite of the best of all procedural systems. To that end they have drawn heavily upon the provisions of the "codes" and the former Federal Equity Rules; in the background is the general outline of modern English procedure. Going further, they have incorporated elements of scattering statutes and rules of court not associated with the usual content of "codes." The result is a system varying in its entirety from that of any other single jurisdiction, yet sharing the procedural foundation of all jurisdictions which administer the English common law. This situation lends itself naturally to the author's point of view, fortified by experience with the transition from "common law" to "code" practice in Illinois in 1934, that the true effectiveness of procedural change comes from clearly relat M797070 |