Editing Demurrer (section)

===Federal courts===
In civil cases in the [[United States district court]]s, the demurrer was expressly abolished by Rule 7(c) of the [[Federal Rules of Civil Procedure]] ("FRCP", also "Federal Rules") when the FRCP went into effect on September 16, 1938. The demurrer was replaced by the Rule 12(b)(6) [[Motion (legal)#Motion to dismiss|motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim]] upon which relief can be granted.

The demurrer was abolished after American lawyers realized that the pleadings should frame only those issues that will be actively litigated through motion practice once both sides have fully stated their positions and the case is at issue. Although the demurrer technically also framed the issues in a case, treating the demurrer as a pleading came to be seen as irrational because it was the ''only'' pleading that required an immediate hearing and ruling on its content (which consisted of an attack upon the complaint), while the complaint and the answer merely stated the respective positions of each side but did not require [[Hearing (law)|hearing]]s in and of themselves. Thus, it made sense that a discretionary attack upon the complaint that was already being drafted, calendared, heard, and ruled upon like a motion should simply be treated like one.

Having purged the demurrer from federal courts, Rule 7(c) was deemed obsolete by the [[Advisory Committee on Civil Rules]] during the 2002–2007 FRCP revision cycle. It was therefore deleted from the version of the FRCP that went into effect on December 1, 2007.