Professor Jolowicz's comparative analysis of civil procedure concentrates on the purposes served by the institution of litigation rather than on the intentions of those who litigate. Stressing that those purposes go beyond mere dispute resolution by non-violent means, Jolowicz surveys a variety of topics of procedural law, making substantial use of the comparative method, in the attempt to examine and explain the ideas which underlie some of the most important of its constituent elements. In the final section, he deals with the reform of English law and ventures a prediction of the consequences that the new Civil Procedure Rules, together with the reforms which more or less immediately preceded them, will have on the character of English procedural law.

Table of Contents:
Part I. The Litigation Process: 1. Civil litigation; 2. Some twentieth-century developments in Anglo-American civil procedure; 3. On the nature and purposes of civil procedural law; 4. The dilemmas of civil litigation; Part II. Protection of Diffuse, Fragmented and Collective Interests: 5. Introduction; 6. Aspects of US and French law; 7. English law; Part III. Procedural Modes: 8. Civil and administrative procedure; 9. Adversarial and inquisitorial approaches to civil litigation; Part IV. The Parties and the Judge: 10. Da mihi factum dabo tibi jus: a problem of demarcation in English and French law; 11. Fact-finding; 12. The expert, the witness and the judge in civil litigation: French and English law; 13. The use by the judge of his own knowledge (of fact or law or both) in the formation of his decision; Part V. Recourse against Judgements: 14. Civil appeals in England and Wales; 15. Appeal, cassation, amparo and all that: what and why?; 16. Managing overload in appellate courts: 'Western' countries; Part VI. Procedural Reform: 17. 'General ideas' and the reform of civil procedure; 18. Reform of English civil procedure: a derogation from the adversary system?; 19. The Woolf reforms.