For Owen M. Fiss: Some Reflections on the Triumph and the Death of Adjudication

Abstract

The title of this essay, For Owen M. Fiss: Some Reflections on the Triumph and the Death of Adjudication, is modeled on the title of another essay—written in 1975 by Robert Cover and called For James Wm. Moore: Some Reflections on a Reading of the Rules. I use Bob Cover's words to invoke his presence, for it was Bob who brought me together with Owen and forged the links that have become a several-decade collaboration. But my reference to the 1975 essay stems not only from our emotional and intellectual engagement with Cover but also from its relevancy. As many know from Moore's Federal Practice, James William Moore was a law professor at Yale who, along with Charles Clark, helped to write and then to instruct us all about the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Cover's reference to Moore thus evokes the great procedural reform project of the first half of the twentieth century in the United States—the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.