Will Baude

That...

The majority says if it really is a rule of procedure and it's covered by the rules of procedure, then we don't care what state law displaces.

The inquiry is only about the proceduralness of the federal law that does the displacing and never about the substantiveness of the state law that gets displaced.

And I guess I'm, I mean, look, I'm glad I had the law cleaned up.

I don't teach civil procedure, so I'm sure this is right for reasons that are too hard for me to understand.

Oh yeah, so pre-Erie, there were federal statutes, the conformity laws that largely required them to follow state procedural rules and to use the state forms of action.

So there was tons of state law, but that was both pre-Erie and pre-federal rules of procedure.

And the federal rules of procedure, in part, are designed to produce uniform rules of practice in federal court.

So it used to be in the pre-1930s world, if you were an expert in Illinois law or Illinois procedure, you could file an Illinois state court, an Illinois federal court, and they were pretty much the same.

But you couldn't really be a federal practitioner because the rules of federal practice in every state were different depending on the conformity laws of the state.

Post-rules of procedure.

That sounds incredibly confusing.

Well, it was, I mean, it's just as confusing now for people who practice law in Illinois state courts and suddenly have to go into federal court.

Yeah.

I think it was based on where your court was.

Although the appellate court would have to figure out the...

Okay.

Yeah.

And now we just think the uniformity of being able to have, you know, fancy appellate lawyers and fancy trial boutiques around the country doing federal practice in every court is the more relevant kind of confusing.

Which is fine.