Foreword

Near the end of his 15-year term as ALI Director, the distinguished Columbia Law School graduate Geoffrey Hazard undertook an exciting and challenging new project, an effort to fashion rules of civil procedure, appropriate across the civil-law/common-law divide, that would be particularly useful as a guide to resolving transnational commercial disputes. Professor Hazard’s partner in this undertaking has been Professor Michele Taruffo of the University of Pavia, another eminent scholar of comparative regimes of civil procedure. After several years of work and the initial cycle of meetings with the United States and International Advisers and the Members Consultative Group, the ALI decided that this project would benefit from a partnership with an international law-reform organization. Beginning in 1999, the effort has been shared with UNIDROIT, which appointed a Working Group consisting of scholars from Asia, Latin America, Africa, and Europe to review the drafts. For the UNIDROIT portion of the project the Reporters are Geoff Hazard and Professor Rolf Stürner of the University of Freiburg. The first UNIDROIT meeting was in May of 2000, at UNIDROIT’s marvelous palazzo in Rome. At the suggestion of UNIDROIT, it was decided to propose Principles of Civil Procedure, as well as Rules.

The project, now including “Fundamental Principles,” is here being presented for its second discussion at an ALI plenary session; it has been extensively revised since its first Annual Meeting appearance in 1999. The Reporters have taken advantage of an extraordinary range of advice: at last year’s UNIDROIT meeting; at meetings of the Council, Advisers, and Members Consultative Group; at sessions in Tokyo and Singapore in 1999; at a number of meetings in Europe; at meetings of the American and International Bar Associations; and from comments received electronically from around the world. Associate Reporter Antonio Gidi has provided exceptional assistance to the Reporters. We do not know when this particular Institute work will influence law as practiced in any particular jurisdiction. But it seems a safe prediction that at a time when commerce is increasingly global, hard thought about the principles and rules that ought to underlie a fair and accurate system of civil procedure will be valuable, especially as disciplined by the proposal of specific Principles and Rules.

The goal is for this draft, which will also be presented at an UNIDROIT meeting scheduled for this summer in Rome, to be further refined, to be the subject of discussion at additional meetings in various countries over the next year, and eventually to be presented again for final Institute approval.

Lance Liebman
  Director
    The American Law Institute

March 30, 2001