In my view, the story of the last ten years in civil procedure is the slow but inexorable creep of ideas and solutions developed for complex cases into routine cases, and the continued effort of litigators and judges in complex cases to develop ideas and solutions that push the procedural envelope still farther out-thus setting the agenda for the next generation of procedural reform.

I do not want to overstate my claim. The procedures for a lawsuit are still basically the same: a short pleading stage followed by a lengthy discovery stage followed by a culminating event of trial. But there have been a number of significant changes in civil procedure; the most prominent are the modification of Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 11, 16, and 26, the reinvigoration of summary judgment, the delegation of greater authority to federal district courts to reduce expense and delay in civil cases, and the creation of new supplemental jurisdiction and venue provisions. Taken together, and looked at in both historical and theoretical context, these changes suggest that a procedural evolution, if not a revolution, is under way.