Current Developments in Federal Civil Discovery Practice: Setting Reasonable Limits in the Digital Era

摘要

Contrary to what most US litigators would probably assume, there is no due process right to pretrial disclosure. Early US procedure did not provide for anything like the process we now call discovery. The broad discovery rules incorporated in the 1938 Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were "a striking and imaginative departure from tradition." The drafters of the federal rules believed that providing for liberal pre-trial discovery would enhance the truth-finding process and lead to fairer results, whether at trial or by negotiated settlement.