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Longitudinal Study of Trial Courts: A Plea for Development of Explanatory Models

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Albert J. Reiss Jr.
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Abstract

Longitudinal trial court studies lack a simple model of system litigation. This essay advances the argument that models which attempt to explain either trial court behavior or changes in civil litigation have little explanatory power. Rather, a system mobilization model is needed that has the following paradigms: (1) a perception paradigm that produces awareness of matters that might be the subject of a conflict or dispute; (2) a paradigm that explains how these detected matters are socially constructed as potentially legal matters; (3) a legal mobilization paradigm explaining how legal agents or some legal subsystem is mobilized to handle some legal matters; (4) a process paradigm explaining how matters that enter the trial courts become matters for trial; (5) a trial court mobilization paradigm followed by (6) an appellate process paradigm. The development of such a model of system litigation will resolve some of the methodological as well as conceptual problems that currently beset research on trial courts. A number of these problems relating to the longitudinal study of trial courts are discussed.

Type
Part II: Pushing Trial Court Docket Data to the Limits—and Beyond
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 24 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Longitudinal Studies of Trial Courts , 1990 , pp. 345 - 352
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 The Law and Society Association.

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References

1 Galanter's (1974a) typology of one-shot and repeat players in courts can be seen as qualitative expression of a litigant rate of litigation.

2 For a discussion of how it can be theoretically misleading, see Galanter (1974a).

3 All rates are based on some organized system of intelligence and therefore are subject to selection and attrition biases and validity and reliability problems that inhere in each particular organized system of intelligence. See Biderman and Reiss (1967).

4 For similar observations on the construction and explanation of rates in comparative research, see Ietswaart (1990).