William & Mary Law School William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository Faculty Publications Faculty and Deans 4-2019 Substance, Procedure, and the Rules Enabling Act A. Benjamin Spencer [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/facpubs Part of the Civil Procedure Commons, and the Supreme Court of the United States Commons Repository Citation Spencer, A. Benjamin, "Substance, Procedure, and the Rules Enabling Act" (2019). Faculty Publications. 1984. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/facpubs/1984 Copyright c 2019 by the authors. This article is brought to you by the William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/facpubs Substance, Procedure, and the Rules Enabling Act A. Benjamin Spencer ABSTRACT The Supreme Court promulgates rules of procedure (based on the proposals of subordinate rulemaking committees) pursuant to the Rules Enabling Act. This statute empowers the Court to prescribe "general rules of practice and procedure," with the caveat that "[s]uch rules shall not abridge, enlarge or modify any substantive right." TheAct is supposed to stand as a real constraint on what rules or alterations thereof the subordinate rulemaking bodies will consider or propose, as well as on how the Court will choose to interpret any given codifiedFederal Rule. However, the Act has not-to date-been employed to invalidate a promulgated Federal Rule, leading one to wonder whether the Act's admonitions have any real purchase beyond keeping the judiciary from crafting rules that regulate primary conduct. But just how far can the Federal Rules go? Does the fact that none have been invalidated mean that the rulemakers and the Court have managed to adhere successfully to the Act's strictures? ThisArti cle suggests that the answer to that latter question is no. No rule has been invalidated because the Court has not yet been confronted with a live controversy over a rule that challenges its ability to avoid the issue by a saving interpretation. As a result, the Court has not had the opportunity to crystallize the precise contours of what kind of rules the Act does and does not allow it to prescribe. ThisArti cle takes up that enterprise, articulating an understanding of the Rules Enabling Act that will equip the Supreme Court with the ability to judge a rule's validity-and give the rulemakers much clearer guidance regarding the outer boundaries of their remit. Once such an understanding is in hand, a clear candidate for invalidation-Federal Rule of Civil Procedure (FRCP) 15(c)(l)(C)­ comes to the fore. That rule-which (in some jurisdictions) eviscerates defendants' protection from liability, thereby disturbing their vested repose-alters substantive rights in ways the Act, properly understood, will not countenance. Other rules, such as FRCP 4(k) and 4(n), also fall afoul of the Rules Enabling Act if they are analyzed with a proper understanding of the Act's strictures. AUTHOR Justice Thurgood Marshall Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law. I would like to thank those who were able to give helpful comments on the piece. 66 UCLA L. REV. 654 (2019) TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................................................. 656 L THE ADMONITION OF THE RULES ENABLING ACT.................................................................................. 659 A. "Rules of Practice or Procedure" ...................................................................................................... 661 B. "Shall Not Abridge" ............................................................................................................................. 672 1. "Substantive Right" ..................................................................................................................... 672 2. A Separate Constraint? ............................................................................................................... 676 3. The View From the Supreme Court......................................................................................... 681 IL IMPLICATIONS .............................................................................................................................................. 688 A. Rule 15(c)(l) ........................................................................................................................................ 689 1. Is Rule 15(c) a Procedural Rule? ............................................................................................... 691 2. Does Rule 15(c) Abridge, Enlarge, or Modify Substantive Rights? .................................... 691 a. State Statutes of Limitation ................................................................................................ 695 b. Federal Statutes of Limitation ........................................................................................... 702 3. Can Rule 15(c)(l)(C) be Fixed? ................................................................................................ 706 a. Misnomer Correction ........................................................................................................ 706 b. Privity .................................................................................................................................... 709 c. Congressional Enactment .................................................................................................. 709 d. Abrogation ........................................................................................................................... 710 B. Rule 4(k) & Rule 4(n) ......................................................................................................................... 711 1. Are Rules 4(k) and 4(n) Rules of Practice or Procedure? ..................................................... 711 2. Do Rules 4(k) and 4(n) Alter Substantive Rights? ................................................................. 714 3. Bringing Rule 4 Into Compliance With the REA .................................................................. 715 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................................................... 718 655 656 66 UCLA L. REV. 654 (2019) INTRODUCTION The rules that govern the process of adjudication in our federal courts are prescribed by the U.S. Supreme Court pursuant to a grant of authority contained in the Rules Enabling Act (REA), 1 which empowers the Court to craft"rules of practice and procedure," so long as those rules do not "abridge, enlarge or modify any substantive right."2 It has rightly been claimed that the meaning of these admonitions has never clearly been articulated,3 and that the delineation of the REA's strictures remains opaque.4 Many scholars have wrestled with the REA's language in an attempt to understand the precise contours of its constraints.5 Of particular concernhas been how we should understand the nature of its directive that the rules may not alter substantive rights: Is this an additional constraint or simply another way of stating that the rules must be merely procedural?6 1. 28 u.s.c. § 2072 (2018). 2. Id. §2072(a)-(b). 3. See, e.g.,Leslie M. Kelleher, Taking"Substantive Rights"(In the Rules Enabling Act) More Seriously, 74 NOTREDAME L. REv. 47, 49 ( 1998) ("Despite the passage of more than six decades, neither the Court nor the commentators have managed to produce a workable definitionof the 'substantive rights'limitation."). 4. Dep't of Transp. v. Ass'n of Am. RR, 135 S. Ct. 1225, 1250 (2015) (Thomas, J., concurring) (referring to "the difficultyin discerning which rules affectedsubstantive private rights and duties and which did not," and remarkingthat " [w ]e continueto wrestle with this same distinctiontoday in our decisions distinguishingbetween substantiveand procedural rules both in diversity cases and under the Rules Enabling Act"). 5. See StephenB.Burbank, The RulesEnabling Act of 1934, 130 U. PA.L.REv.1015, 1106-12 (1982) [hereinafterBurbank, Rules Enabling Act] (favoring a separation of powers rationale for the constraints of the REA); Stephen B.Burbank & Tobias BarringtonWolff, Redeeming the Missed Opportunities a/ Shady Grove,159 U. PA. L.REV. 17, 52 (2010) (arguing that the REA calls for "moderate and restrained interpretation of Federal Rules that otherwise would impinge on the freedom of Congress or the States to pursue lawmaking aims that might traditionally be characterized as substantive"); Paul D. Carrington,"Substance" and ''Procedure" in the Rules Enabling Act, 1989 DUKEL.J. 281 (1989) (suggestinga functional,context-specific approach to givingmeaning to the terms "substance" and "procedure"); John Hart Ely, The IrrepressibleMyth a/Erie,87 HARv.L.REv. 693, 718-19 (1974) (insistingthat the limitationsof the REA are twofold: "Not only must a Rule be procedural;it must in additionabridge, enlarge or modifyno substantive right.");Kelleher, supra note 3, at 108-21 (outlining a range of considerationsrulemakers should use to determine whetherthe U.S. Supreme Court may regulate a matter under theREA); MartinH. Redish & Dennis Murashko, The RulesEnabling Act and the Procedural-SubstantiveTension: A Lesson in StatutoryInterpretation, 93 MINN.L. REv. 26, 30-31 (2008) (arguing for a "relaxed separation" interpretationof the two wings of the REA, under which "an incidental effecton substantiverights does