Rules of the Supreme Court

The Rules of the Supreme Court (RSC) were the rules which governed civil procedure in the Supreme Court of Judicature of England and Wales from its formation in 1883 until 1999.

The RSC applied to all civil cases in the Supreme Court in England and Wales commenced after the merger of the Courts of Common Law and Equity in 1883 by the Judicature Acts until they were superseded by the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) in 1999 on 26 April 1999. Civil proceedings in the County Courts during this period were governed by the separate County Court Rules.

The RSC were designed to replace the individual rules of the courts of Law and Equity which were subsumed into the Supreme Court providing one harmonised set of procedural rules for all civil cases.

Beginning in 1873 the Judicature Acts merged the previously separate English courts of Common Law and Equity into the new Supreme Court of Judicature made up of the Court of Appeal and High Court of Justice. The rules and procedures of the old courts and systems of law differed greatly. As Law and Equity would now be applied in the same courts the Judiciary felt that there should be common procedural rules for both systems of law. The RSC were created in 1883 and were made up of Orders and Acts of Parliament.

Over time the original orders and acts were supplemented by further of the same. By 1951 the RSC were made up of some 144 separate Orders and Rules and 9 Acts of Parliament.

In 1951 the Evershed Committee on Supreme Court Practice and Procedure published its Second Interim Report in which it strongly recommended that "a complete revision of the Rules be immediately put in hand".

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