Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-fv566 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-22T02:26:27.998Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Tangled Tale: Studying State Supreme Courts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Stephen Daniels
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

No part of the history of U.S. courts presents such a tangle of detail as does the handling of appeals. Nor does the tangled story unwind toward a happy solution.

James Willard Hurst, The Growth of the Law: The Law Makers (1950:101)

Writing in 1950, Hurst (1950: 183) noted that there was far more opinion on the function of courts than actual knowledge of their work. Thirty years later his assessment was only slightly more encouraging, but he noted at least some positive developments. Among them was “a substantial increase in ordered collection and assessment of facts about the flow of court business” (1980–81: 407), some of which tried to cover broad areas of the country and reached back into the nineteenth century. Much of this came from a number of longitudinal studies of court business the findings of which began appearing in publications in the mid-1970s. These were ambitious, pioneering, and often theoretically challenging studies that have spawned a thriving subfield in both the United States and Europe. One of these works is a sixteen-state study of supreme courts covering the years 1870 to 1970, conducted by Robert A. Kagan, Bliss Cartwright, Lawrence M. Friedman, and Stanton Wheeler. My purpose here is to provide an overview of the seven articles reporting on this study that appeared between 1975 and 1987, and to provide a critical review of the four central articles in the series.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 22 , Issue 5 , 1988 , pp. 833 - 863
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 The Law and Society Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The author thanks Kermit Hall, Robert Kagan, Joanne Martin, and Stanton Wheeler for their comments and suggestions.

References

BAUM, Lawrence, Sheldon, GOLDMAN, and Austin, SARAT (1981–82) “Research Note: The Evolution of Litigation in the Federal Courts of Appeal, 1895–1975,” 16 Law & Society Review 291.Google Scholar
BLEGVAD, Britt-Mari and Annegrete, WULF (1986) “A Litigation Explosion? Why Not in the State of Denmark,” paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, May 29–June 11, 1986, Chicago, Ill.Google Scholar
BURNHAM, Walter Dean (1970) Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
CARTER, Orrin (1906) “The Supreme Court and Its Method of Work,” 3 Illinois Law Review 151.Google Scholar
CARTWRIGHT, Bliss (1975) “Conclusion: Disputes and Reported Cases,” 9 Law & Society Review 369.Google Scholar
CLARK, David (1981) “Adjudication to Administration: A Statistical Analysis of Federal District Courts in the Twentieth Century,” 55 Southern California Law Review 65.Google Scholar
DANIELS, Stephen (1986) “Explaining Caseload Dynamics: The Use of Evolutionary Models,” paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, May 29–June 1, 1986, Chicago, IL.Google Scholar
DANIELS, Stephen (1985) “Continuity and Change in Patterns of Case Handling: A Case Study of Two Rural Counties,” 19 Law & Society Review 381.Google Scholar
DANIELS, Stephen (1984) “Ladders and Bushes: The Problem of Caseloads and Studying Court Activities Over Time,” 1984 American Bar Foundation Research Journal 751.Google Scholar
DANIELS, Stephen, Ada, MELTON, and Rebecca, WILKIN (1984) “The Illinois Supreme Court: What Role Does It Play?,” Illinois Issues (April 22).Google Scholar
DAVIES, Thomas (1982) “Affirmed: A Study of Criminal Appeals and Decisionmaking Norms in a California Court of Appeal,” 1982 American Bar Foundation Research Journal 543.Google Scholar
DuBOIS, Philip (1980) From Ballot to Bench. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
FRIEDMAN, Lawrence (1986) Total Justice. New York: Russell Sage.Google Scholar
FRIEDMAN, Lawrence (1980) “The Six Million Dollar Man: Litigation and Rights Consciousness in Modern America,” 39 Maryland Law Review 661.Google Scholar
FRIEDMAN, Lawrence, Robert, KAGAN, Bliss, CARTWRIGHT, and Stanton, WHEELER (1981) “State Supreme Courts: A Century of Style and Citation,” 33 Stanford Law Review 773.Google Scholar
FRIEDMAN, Lawrence, and Robert, PERCIVAL (1976) “A Tale of Two Courts: Litigation in Alameda and San Benito Counties,” 10 Law & Society Review 267.Google Scholar
GOULD, Stephen Jay, and Niles, ELDREDGE (1977) “Punctuated Equilibria: The Tempo and Mode of Evolution Reconsidered,” 3 Paleobiology 115.Google Scholar
GROSSMAN, Joel, and Austin, SARAT (1975) “Litigation in the Federal Courts: A Comparative Perspective,” 9 Law & Society Review 321.Google Scholar
HALL, Kermit (1986) “Dissent on the California Supreme Court, 1850–1920,” 11 Social Science History 63.Google Scholar
HALL, Kermit (1980) “The Children of the Cabins: The Lower Federal Judiciary, Modernization, and the Political Culture, 1789–1899,” 75 Northwestern University Law Review 423.Google Scholar
HALL, Kermit (1979) “The Promises and Perils of Prosopography—Southern Style,” 32 Vanderbilt Law Review 331.Google Scholar
HARRIS, Peter (1985a) “Ecology and Culture in the Communication of Precedent Among State Supreme Courts, 1870–1970,” 19 Law & Society Review 449.Google Scholar
HARRIS, Peter (1985b) “Difficult Cases and the Display of Authority,” 1 Journal of Law, Economics and Organizations 209.Google Scholar
HOWARD, J. Woodford (1981) The Courts of Appeal in the Federal Judicial System: A Study of the Second, Fifth, and District of Columbia Circuits. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
HURST, James Willard (1980–81) “The Functions of Courts in the United States, 1950–1980,” 15 Law & Society Review 401.Google Scholar
HURST, James Willard (1964) Law and Economic Growth: The Legal History of the Lumber Industry in Wisconsin, 1836–1916.Google Scholar
HURST, James Willard (1950) The Growth of the Law: The Law Makers. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
JAROS, Dean, and Bradley, CANON (1970). “Dissent on State Supreme Courts: The Differential Significance of Characteristics of Judges,” 15 Midwest Journal of Political Science 322.Google Scholar
KAGAN, Robert (1984) “The Routinization of Debt Collection: An Essay on Social Change and Conflict in the Courts,” 18 Law & Society Review 323.Google Scholar
KAGAN, Robert, Bobby, INFELISE, and Robert, DETLEFSON (1984) “American State Supreme Court Justices, 1900–1970,” 1984 American Bar Foundation Research Journal 371.Google Scholar
KAGAN, Robert, Bobby, INFELISE, and Robert, DETLEFSON (1978) “The Evolution of State Supreme Courts,” 76 Michigan Law Review 961.Google Scholar
KAGAN, Robert, Bliss, CARTWRIGHT, Lawrence, FRIEDMAN, and Stanton, WHEELER (1977) “The Business of State Supreme Courts, 1870–1970,” 30 Stanford Law Review 121.Google Scholar
KAUPEN, Wolfgang, and Etienne, LANGERWERF (1983) “The Comparative Analysis of Litigation Rates,” in Cain, M. and Kulcsar, K. (eds.), Disputes and the Law. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado.Google Scholar
KELLER, Morton (1977) Affairs of State: Public Life in Late Nineteenth Century America. Cambridge: Belknap Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LEMPERT, Richard (1978) “More Tales of Two Courts: Exploring Changes in the ‘Dispute Settlement Function’ of Trial Courts,” 13 Law & Society Review 91.Google Scholar
McCORMICK, Richard (1979) “The Party Period and Public Policy: An Exploratory Hypothesis,” 66 Journal of American History 279.Google Scholar
McINTOSH, Wayne (1980–81) “150 Years of Litigation and Dispute Settlement: A Court Tale,” 15 Law & Society Review 823.Google Scholar
MEEKER, James (1984) “Criminal Appeals over the Last 100 Years,” 22 Criminology 551.Google Scholar
MEEKER, James (1982) State Supreme Court Litigants and their Disputes: The Impact of Socioeconomic Development from 1870 to 1970, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo.Google Scholar
MUNGER, Frank (1986) “Commercial Litigation in West Virginia State and Federal Courts, 1870–1940,” 30 American Journal of Legal History 322.Google Scholar
SKOWRONEK, Stephen (1982) Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
SUNDQUIST, James (1973) Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
VERWOERD, Jan, and Erhard, BLANKENBURG (1986) “Comparing Litigation in the Netherlands with that of Northrhine-Westphalia in Germany, 1970–1981,” paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, May 29–June 1, 1986, Chicago, IL.Google Scholar
WANNER, Craig (1975) “The Public Ordering of Private Relations, Part Two: Winning Civil Court Cases,” 10 Law & Society Review 293.Google Scholar
WANNER, Craig (1974) “The Public Ordering of Private Relations, Part One: Initiating Civil Cases in Urban Trial Courts,” 9 Law & Society Review 421.Google Scholar
WHEELER, Stanton, Bliss, CARTWRIGHT, Robert, KAGAN, and Lawrence, FRIEDMAN (1987) “Do the Haves' Come Out Ahead? Winning and Losing in State Supreme Courts, 1870–1970,” paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, May 29–June 1, 1986, Chicago, Ill.Google Scholar
WHEELER, Stanton, Bliss, CARTWRIGHT, Robert, KAGAN, and Lawrence, FRIEDMAN (1986) “Do the ‘Haves’ Come Out Ahead? Winning and Losing in State Supreme Court, 1870–1970,” 21 Law & Society Review 403.Google Scholar
WOLD, John, and Gregory, CALDIERA (1980) “Routine Decision-Making in Five California Courts of Appeal,” 13 Polity 334.Google Scholar
WRIGHT, Erik (1978) Class, Crisis and the State. London: New Left Books.Google Scholar
YALE LAW JOURNAL (1978) “Courting Reversal: The Supervisory Role of State Supreme Courts,” 87 Yale Law Journal 1191.Google Scholar