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This article reviews recent developments and changes in legislation, case law, and Virginia Supreme Court Rules affecting civil litigation. The scope of the paper does not extend to criminal procedure or topics unique to equity practice.

In the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty, the European Union (EU) communitarized civil justice by transferring competence over "judicial cooperation in civil matters" from the EU's Third Pillar to its First Pillar. Soon afterwards, the European Council prepared a detailed five-year plan ('Tampere Milestones') at its 1999 summit in Finland. These two steps unleashed a deluge of law- and policy-making aimed at reforming the European legal system. While consisting largely of technocratic issues dealing with procedural law, the conflict of laws (private international law), and the administration of justice (e.g., judicial networks and judicial training), the changes introduced since communitarization took effect in 1999 have transformed the European legal system, and have ongoing potential to transform it further. Part II maps the changes, places them in historical context, and provides an analytical framework for grasping their significance.Part III of this dissertation explains my two case studies: the communitarization of civil justice in Amsterdam and the long-term policy planning process in Tampere. My data is drawn from 70 qualitative interviews with (mostly) legal elites and the available documentary sources. My explanation draws on theories of European (dis)integration as well as on neoinstitutional (new institutional) theories and others that provide insight into the agency of legal elites in transnational governance settings, such as the EU.The 'Grand Debate' between neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism provides the theoretical starting point for my analysis. My findings provide considerable support for neofunctionalism (Haas 1958, Niemann 2006) and little support for intergovernmentalism (Moravcsik 1993 & 1998a). As to the former, I trace the complex interactions among national and supranational actors and find strong evidence of functional, social, and cultivated spillover, but no evidence of exogenous spillover. As to the latter, I find virtually no evidence that the preferences articulated by national legal elites were oriented towards preserving national legal culture or institutions. Rather, legal elites treated the exercise of preference formation as a collaborative effort to imagine and construct an ideal European legal order, which might, in some cases, benefit from particular national legal institutions or from the experience of subregional legal cooperation, such as in the Nordic countries. The one exception that provides some support for an intergovernmentalist explanation is that the decision to communitarize civil justice was indirectly driven by the preferences of some Member States not to communitarize criminal justice issues. In this sense, civil justice was the easier and less intrusive path. The traditional theories – neofunctionalism and, to a lesser extent, intergovernmentalism – go a long way towards explaining my two case studies (i.e., Amsterdam and Tampere), but are not adequate standing alone. For this reason, I draw upon postfunctionalism (Hooghe & Marks 2009a) to explain the role of communal identity as a driver. My findings show that subregional identity oriented towards Nordic legal culture and cooperation were an important factor in Finnish preference formation. Finland plays a key role in explaining both case studies, not least because the Tampere summit took place in Finland during the first Finnish Presidency. Chapter 7 shows, however, that Finland also played a key role in regard to the communitarization of civil justice in Amsterdam. Mine is not, however, a single-actor explanation, since the efforts of Finland were partly shaped by the work of other (national but especially supranational) actors who were active in the field, notably the Commission, the Council Secretariat, and the European Parliament. Although the treaty-revision and summitry processes in the EU are highly path dependent, they leave considerable room for contemporaneous actors – including strong-willed civil servants – to leave their mark on the course of European integration.My explanation draws on neoinstitutional theories oriented towards the "logic of consequences" and the "logic of appropriateness." Both contribute towards an understanding of the role of the Dutch Presidency (Amsterdam, 1997) and the Finnish Presidency (Tampere, 1999). In addition, neoinstitutionalism contributes to my explanation of the specific agency of legal elites. Sociological institutionalism, in particular, affords deep insights into the role of "knowledge-bearing occupational groups" (Ziegler 1997) – such as legal elites – as does the literature on epistemic communities (Haas 1992, Cross 2013). Using my data, I link particular outcomes to the professional worldviews and ideational predisposition of key legal elite actors.

Comparing the legal systems is a specific method in which due to its important function is considered as a separate branch in law. None of the branches in law can place its knowledge merely on ideas and findings within the national borders. Several basic objections have been given regarding the definition and purpose of comparative study in civil procedure. In addition there are specific problems regarding studying practically the similar systems in a legal system like differences in purpose, definition and concept. In different legal systems like civil law and common law systems in which there is a divergence, even the judicial system`s organs and judges` appointment and judicial formalism are different, which add to the problems of the comparative study. Reviewing these differences could lead to a better understanding of these legal systems and recognizing the common principles in making use of each other`s findings considering these differences and indicate the obstacles of comparative study in this regard.

Abstract: The Europeanization of national civil procedure law consists out of several pillars. The influence of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is well known. A second pillar of the European influence on civil procedure law is the growing number of European regulations concerning the crossroads of civil procedure law and private international law. This article focuses on the Europeanization of national law by a third, 'invisible pillar'. The European influence in the 'invisible pillar' concerns many topics, such as ex officio application law, burden of proof, means of proof, costs, the free choice of a lawyer, the threshold amount exempt from seizure and arbitration. The first part of this invisible pillar follows from the role of national civil procedure law in enforcing EU law. The European Court leaves the procedural law to the national courts. The second area of the invisible pillar concerns procedural rules in Directives. A close look at several Directives reveals that the list of procedural topics touched upon by Directives is far from small. Directives contain procedural rules relevant for various capita of the civil procedure law of the Member States. This article seeks to shine some light on parts of this pillar by examining three topics: ex officio application, costs and the free choice of a lawyer, and legal expenses insurance. These examples serve to demonstrate that this area covers a wide variety of topics. Three problems relating to this invisible pillar will be identified: uncertainty, external differences, and internal differences.

Tremendous efforts of legislators are directed towards the development of an ideal judicial system and procedure of administering justice. However, current trends of judiciary reformation are easier to comprehend and accept if we turn to the origins of legal protection of human rights which, undoubtedly, go back to the Roman law. Methodology: From this point we use comparing methods for analizing the legislative provisions; the structural method and historical method was used for the background of Legal procedure in roman law. Results and conclusions: In this article we will outline the main stages of formation of legal protection of human rights in Roman law and characterize types of these processes – namely legis actiones, formulary procedure and cognitio. By analyzing the original sources that have survived to our times, namely the Law of Twelve Tables, Gaius`s Institutions and Justinian`s Digestes, we will examine what peculiarities of consideration and resolution of cases each of these stages demonstrated; how the traditional views on the behavior of the parties and the court in the process were established; which main requirements were applied to justice in civil matters in Roman law. The course of the work the following methods were used: essential, comparative, general historical.