Alabama’s Procedural Reform and the National Movement

Abstract

The Alabama Rules of Civil Procedure, prepared by the Commission for Judicial Reform for legislative approval this spring, represent at once a highly competent professional achievement and a splendid augury for sound procedural advance in this important state. I do not recall anywhere a smoother adaptation of the popular federal practice to local needs than is found here. I count it a privilege to express my warm approval of the measure and my conviction that its passage will put Alabama in the forefront of procedural progress in this country. As it happens, this will fulfill a hope and a prophecy I expressed many years ago. When the federal rules were first formulated, I spoke to lawyers in many cities explaining as Re- porter to the Supreme Court's Advisory Committee the details of the reform and my own expectation and belief that the same reform would shortly be adopted in the states I visited. So I came to Birmingham in the fall of 1938 after visits to Louisville and Knoxville and prior to visits to Atlanta and New Orleans., It has taken almost two decades to realize the objective I visualized, but I am confident that it will now prove just as durable a move here as it has elsewhere. Not a jurisdiction adopting the modern procedure has ever wanted to return to the past; indeed, nowhere has there been a demand of even sizable character to that end.