NCJ Number
125523
Journal
Law and Society Review Volume: 24 Issue: 2 Dated: (1990) Pages: 571-593
Date Published
1990
Length
23 pages
Annotation
Drawing on the experience of the European working group for the comparative study of litigation patterns, this study assesses the possibilities and limits of longitudinal international comparisons.
Abstract
The study describes difficulties arising from the differences in European court structures and the way these difficulties are compounded by the manner in which official statistics are kept. It also describes the effects of differences in legal culture and in social organization that prevent valid comparison even where court systems and statistical reports are apparently similar. The study notes that the major challenge is ensuring that what is compared is comparable. Overall national litigation data are not comparable as such; official statistics raise more questions than they answer. The problems lie in the sociolegal categories used in various countries, consistency of registration over time, and differences in legal procedures. The study suggests that a more fruitful line of inquiry begins with sociolegal categories of problems (e.g., housing, debt) and searches for litigation patterns. Thus, disaggregating litigation data have the additional advantage of allowing the use of problem-specific baselines, which makes for greater comparability of data. 2 tables, 26 footnotes.