In the United States we emphasize procedure right at the start of a student's legal education. Not only is Civil Procedure is an important mandatory course for all entering law students, but procedure is critical in most of the other first year courses as well.
Students read and discuss the opinions of judges in actual cases.
What this necessarily means is that substantive law courses, like torts and contracts, are also studied in their specific procedural contexts. My first argument is that distinctive features of the U.S. legal system inherently require special, complex, procedural rules. I will give three examples. The American legal system has jealously retained juries for civil trials, not only for personal injury cases, but also for all sorts of complex commercial disputes, including antitrust cases and intellectual property cases. This is quite unlike other common law nations, such as Great Britain, Canada and Australia.