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Is it important to know for example, that lack of subject matter jurisdiction falls under Fed. Rules of Civ Pro. 12 or is it just important to know what the rules are??

From the way my professor is teaching it, we need to know what the rules state and what they mean.


Edit - wouldn't knowing what the rules are mean knowing what they cover? How can you know that Rule 8 governs initial pleadings without knowing what that entails?

Depends on your professor. Mine wouldn't have required knowing the rule number for jurisdiction. Trust your instincts.

are you aware of how expansive Rule 12 is?

My civ pro prof has not yet uttered the letters "FRCP." We are on the fourth week and are just now starting WW Volkswagen. Asahi Metal is next week. CivPro is my section's underweighted course first semester, but I'm still getting a little concerned.

Duralex wrote:My civ pro prof has not yet uttered the letters "FRCP." We are on the fourth week and are just now starting WW Volkswagen. Asahi Metal is next week. CivPro is my section's underweighted course first semester, but I'm still getting a little concerned.

That's odd, we started our long semester today and the first thing our Civpro professor does is break out one of our required books (FRCP) and says that this book will be our best friend even if it isn't friendly reading, and we go on to discuss several rules that were assigned for the first day.

Duralex wrote:My civ pro prof has not yet uttered the letters "FRCP." We are on the fourth week and are just now starting WW Volkswagen. Asahi Metal is next week. CivPro is my section's underweighted course first semester, but I'm still getting a little concerned.

Many profs have a particular way they like to teach a course. It's not always a matter of start on page 1, day 1 and 14 weeks later you're at page 1150. I don't recall exactly, but I bet we didn't get to WorldWide and Asahi until at least mid-semester.

Duralex wrote:My civ pro prof has not yet uttered the letters "FRCP." We are on the fourth week and are just now starting WW Volkswagen. Asahi Metal is next week. CivPro is my section's underweighted course first semester, but I'm still getting a little concerned.

You are not alone... we just finished WW and are doing Burger King and Asahi today. The prof hasn't mentioned the FRCP at all. I had to figure out myself that there is a rule that gives a Federal District Court the same personal jurisdiction as the state in which it is located. I was getting really confused as to how a state long-arm could affect the jurisdiction of a federal court.

MChamp4 wrote:Is it important to know for example, that lack of subject matter jurisdiction falls under Fed. Rules of Civ Pro. 12 or is it just important to know what the rules are??

Regardless of whether your professor requires citing to the actual rule number, you will be at a time disadvantage on essay questions if you are writing the content of each rule every time you use one, while other people are just saying "per 19(a)..." You don't have to memorize them all, but if you're allowed to write in your book or bring notes, it'd be good to make a "table of contents" type list on one page.

I've always tried to remember them by number (from when I did my paralegal thing) so as not to confuse the associated pleadings with their California equivalents and use the wrong term in haste (e.g. 'demurrer' vs 'Rule 12(b)(6) motion.')