Civil procedure,
by its elements
Rules broken into elements
The six rules here are the threshold ones the course has covered — jurisdiction, venue, pleading.
Casebook: Hazard, Fletcher, Bundy & Bradt, Pleading and Procedure (12th ed.). The syllabus skips Pennoyer and Harris v. Balk and begins at International Shoe, p. 58. Outline draft due 10.5.26; midterm 10.7.26.
Diversity jurisdiction is two requirements joined by "and." Summary judgment is two. Impleader is one, with a deadline attached. Procedure is made of elements exactly as larceny is — it is just rarely taught that way, which is why it feels like a sequence of motions rather than a set of rules.
This page takes six rules apart, and adds the three things procedure needs that a definitions chart never does: when an element is tested, who has to establish it, and whether it survives being left out.
Procedure is built the same way
Diversity jurisdiction is two requirements joined by "and." Summary judgment is two. Impleader is one, with a timing condition attached. Personal jurisdiction is a statutory requirement followed by a constitutional one, and the constitutional one has requirements of its own. None of this is different in kind from larceny.
What makes procedure feel harder is that it is usually taught as a sequence of motions rather than as a set of rules with elements. So the same fact gets discussed four times — at pleading, at discovery, at summary judgment, on appeal — and it is never quite clear what is being asked. Break each rule into its elements and the sequence stops being the organising idea. The elements are.
If you have read the general elements page, the skill transfers directly. Requirement, alternative, factor, discretion, and things the rule does not use — all of it applies here unchanged. What follows is the part procedure adds.
Three dimensions a definitions chart never needs
A criminal law elements chart can state a crime as a flat list, because every element is proved by the same party, at the same trial, on the same record. Procedural elements are not like that, and three questions attach to each one.
| Dimension | The question | Why it bites |
|---|---|---|
| Stage | The same element is tested more than once, on a different record each time, asking a different question. | Notice can be pleaded plausibly, survive summary judgment because the dispute is genuine, and still fail at trial. |
| Burden | Who must establish it — and whether that is a burden of production or of persuasion. | Once personal jurisdiction is challenged the plaintiff supports it; the defendant ordinarily carries the fairness argument. |
| Preservation | Whether the requirement survives being left out. Some vanish; one can never be given up. | Rule 12(b)(2)–(5) are lost if omitted from the first Rule 12 motion. Subject-matter jurisdiction is not a party’s to surrender. |
The third is the one with no analogue in substantive law, and it produces the most painful kind of error: an argument that is right on the merits and unavailable anyway. A defendant who omits a personal jurisdiction objection from its first Rule 12 motion does not have a weak objection afterwards. It has no objection, however strong the facts were.
There is also a fourth thing worth naming, because procedure is full of it and substantive lists are not: the measurement rule. "Excluding interest and costs." "Determined at the time of filing." "Materiality is supplied by the governing substantive law." These are not requirements. They tell you how to measure a requirement you already have, and mistaking one for an element adds a hurdle the rule never set.
Six rules, broken apart
Each element carries its stage, who has to establish it, and whether it survives being left out. Where a rule’s own structure is the trap, the note underneath says so.
Diversity jurisdiction
28 U.S.C. § 1332(a)- Complete diversity between opposing parties
- More than $75,000, excluding interest and costs
Personal jurisdiction
Rule 4(k); forum long-arm law; due process- A statutory basis reaching this defendant
- Purposeful contacts with the forum
- A claim arising out of or relating to those contacts
- Fairness on the circumstances
Summary judgment
Rule 56- No genuine dispute as to any material fact
- The movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law
Impleader
Rule 14(a)- A nonparty who may owe the defending party all or part of its liability to the claimant
- Leave of court, if filed more than 14 days after the original answer
Judgment as a matter of law
Rule 50- The party has been fully heard on the issue
- No legally sufficient evidentiary basis for a reasonable jury to find for that party
- The specific ground was raised before the case went to the jury
- The motion was renewed within 28 days of judgment
Claim preclusion
Common law; § 1738 for state judgments- A valid final judgment on the merits
- Same parties or their privies
- The same claim — measured by the transaction, not the legal theory
Drills
Four exercises, in the order the skill is built: take a rule apart, find the live question in a pattern, work out who has to establish it, and check whether it is still available at all.
Take the rule apart
Four procedural rules. For each proposition, say whether it is a requirement, one route among several, a rule about how something is measured, a matter left to the court, or simply not part of this rule — even if it is required by another one.
Find the element in doubt
Four patterns. Most requirements are settled on the facts as given; one is not. Name it.
Who carries it, and when
Burdens, stages, and the difference between establishing something and raising it.
Keeping it alive
The dimension with no substantive-law analogue: which requirements survive being left out, and which are gone for good.