The Expiration of the Civil Justice Reform Act of 1990

Ever since the United States Congress passed the Civil Justice Reform Act of 1990 (CJRA),1 a minor mystery of federal court jurisprudence has been whether - and if so, precisely when - that significant and controversial legislation expired.2 The measure instituted unprecedented nationwide experimentation with procedures that lawmakers intended to decrease cost and delay in civil litigation, but the statute's implementation additionally balkanized federal practice and procedure.3 Several important phenomena contributed to this mystery. First, the legislation, as enacted initially, was unclear. The CJRA required that all ninety-four federal district courts promulgate civil justice expense and delay reduction plans not later than three years from the December 1990 date on which the legislation took effect, while simultaneously authorizing every district to experiment for seven years following this December 1990 effective date with approaches that each court believed would save cost and time.4 Nevertheless, the statute failed to provide specifically for expiration at the conclusion of the seven-year time frame that the legislation prescribed.5 Second, an October 6, 1997 congressional enactment, which occurred several months before the December 1997 date upon which the statute ostensibly would expire, exacerbated the lack of clarity in the CJRA.6 The new legislation explicitly authorized indefinite continuation of the civil case reporting requirements that section 476 of the CJRA imposed.7 Moreover, the 1997 enactment expressly stated that six of the seven other sections in the CJRA would expire.8 These expiring provisions included section 472, prescribing the development and implementation of civil justice expense and delay reduction plans; section 473, describing the contents of those plans; section 474, providing for circuit court and United States Judicial Conference oversight of district court statutory effectuation; and section 475, requesting periodic district court assessments of CJRA implementation.9 The provisos also encompassed section 477, asking the Judicial Conference to create a model civil justice cost and delay reduction plan for use by the district courts; and section 478, calling for district courts to establish advisory groups, which would assist the judges in assembling these plans.10 However, the 1997 legislation did not mention the CJRA's eighth section, section 471, the provision instructing district courts to adopt civil justice expense and delay reduction plans.11 There were multiple interpretations of Congress's failure to address section 471 in the 1997 enactment while specifically enumerating all seven remaining sections of the 1990 statute. Perhaps the most plausible construction was that legislators intended for section 471 to remain in effect and not to expire.12 Senators and representatives now have clarified this uncertainty by explicitly providing in section 206 of the Federal Courts Improvement Act of 2000 for section 471 of the CJRA to expire.13 A rule revision proceeding that the United States Supreme Court completed in 2000 suggests that the Justices may have anticipated Congress's action or may have considered that the statute already had expired. …