James R. Maxeiner is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore. Before entering academia he spent more than two decades in the international practice of law, first with the United States Department of Justice and then as Vice President and Associated General Counsel of Dun and Bradstreet, Inc. He is a former Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and guest researcher of the Max Planck Institutes in Hamburg, Freiburg and Munich. He is a member of the American Law Institute.

"It's a fantastic work that lays out in clear, calm language a nonspecialist can appreciate how the experience of going to court in the United States differs from that in other advanced countries -- specifically, Germany and South Korea. Ironically, foreign legal systems often achieve better results precisely by following practices that American courts once followed in earlier eras, such as narrowing the range of issues at an early stage and requiring that compulsory evidence-gathering processes be closely supervised by a judge. Waves of supposedly liberalizing reforms in this country -- such as the adoption of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (F.R.C.P.) in the 1930s, and the expansion of unsupervised discovery in the 1970s and 1980s -- stripped away protections against undue expense and strategic use of the process."- Walter Olson, Cato Institute

• 1. Civil justice: an introduction; 2. Legal method: thinking like a lawyer; 3. Lawyers and legal systems: access to justice; 4. The court: jurisdiction and applicable law; 5. Pleading: the matter in controversy; 6. Process: the right to be heard; 7. Judgments, appeals and outcomes; 8. Conclusion.

James R. Maxeiner is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore. Before entering academia he spent more than two decades in the international practice of law, first with the United States Department of Justice and then as Vice President and Associated General Counsel of Dun and Bradstreet, Inc. He is a former Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and guest researcher of the Max Planck Institutes in Hamburg, Freiburg and Munich. He is a member of the American Law Institute.

"It's a fantastic work that lays out in clear, calm language a nonspecialist can appreciate how the experience of going to court in the United States differs from that in other advanced countries -- specifically, Germany and South Korea. Ironically, foreign legal systems often achieve better results precisely by following practices that American courts once followed in earlier eras, such as narrowing the range of issues at an early stage and requiring that compulsory evidence-gathering processes be closely supervised by a judge. Waves of supposedly liberalizing reforms in this country -- such as the adoption of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (F.R.C.P.) in the 1930s, and the expansion of unsupervised discovery in the 1970s and 1980s -- stripped away protections against undue expense and strategic use of the process."- Walter Olson, Cato Institute

• 1. Civil justice: an introduction; 2. Legal method: thinking like a lawyer; 3. Lawyers and legal systems: access to justice; 4. The court: jurisdiction and applicable law; 5. Pleading: the matter in controversy; 6. Process: the right to be heard; 7. Judgments, appeals and outcomes; 8. Conclusion.

James R. Maxeiner is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore. Before entering academia he spent more than two decades in the international practice of law, first with the United States Department of Justice and then as Vice President and Associated General Counsel of Dun and Bradstreet, Inc. He is a former Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and guest researcher of the Max Planck Institutes in Hamburg, Freiburg and Munich. He is a member of the American Law Institute.

"It's a fantastic work that lays out in clear, calm language a nonspecialist can appreciate how the experience of going to court in the United States differs from that in other advanced countries -- specifically, Germany and South Korea. Ironically, foreign legal systems often achieve better results precisely by following practices that American courts once followed in earlier eras, such as narrowing the range of issues at an early stage and requiring that compulsory evidence-gathering processes be closely supervised by a judge. Waves of supposedly liberalizing reforms in this country -- such as the adoption of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (F.R.C.P.) in the 1930s, and the expansion of unsupervised discovery in the 1970s and 1980s -- stripped away protections against undue expense and strategic use of the process."- Walter Olson, Cato Institute

• 1. Civil justice: an introduction; 2. Legal method: thinking like a lawyer; 3. Lawyers and legal systems: access to justice; 4. The court: jurisdiction and applicable law; 5. Pleading: the matter in controversy; 6. Process: the right to be heard; 7. Judgments, appeals and outcomes; 8. Conclusion.