The Law's Delay: Essays on Undue Delay in Civil Litigation

A book series devoted to the common foundations of the European legal systems, the Ius Commune Europaeum series includes comparative legal studies as well as studies on the effect of treaties within national legal systems. All areas of the law are covered. The books are published in various European languages under the auspices of METRO, the Institute for Transnational Legal Research at Maastricht University. Civil procedure and delay were born together. This is, of course, due to the fact that no lawsuit can be decided fairly without at least some minimum period of time in between first presenting the case to a court and obtaining a final judgement. Manifestly this type of delay is not problematic. Delay becomes a problem, however, if it can be classified as 'undue delay', i.e., when it is felt that too much time has elapsed between the filing of an action and its ultimate decision by the court. Even though there have been many reform attempts and measures have been taken in both Civilian and Anglo-American jurisdictions to accelerate civil litigation, complaints are still being voiced today. The Legislature and rule-making authorities as well as numerous reform commissions continue to be occupied in curbing the evil of undue delay, often without much success. This may be due to various reasons, one of them being the fact that too often a comparative and historical approach to the subject of reform of civil procedure is missing. The present book aims at changing this situation by providing a comparative and historical analysis of undue delay in civil litigation.