NCJ Number
125500
Journal
Law and Society Review Volume: 24 Issue: 2 Dated: (1990) Pages: complete issue
Editor(s)
F Munger
Date Published
1990
Length
426 pages
Annotation
This series of articles on longitudinal studies of trial courts involves the combined efforts of 23 scholars from many disciplines and methodological perspectives in assessing the goals, achievements, problems, and potential of such research.
Abstract
In Part I two essays provide both positive and critical assessments of the development of longitudinal research on trial courts. Part II presents some of the best recent longitudinal research based on trial court docket data, together with comments by investigators experienced in trial court research; they define more precisely the limits of this kind of longitudinal study. Part III presents an assortment of theoretical starting points for longitudinal research on trial courts, including the development of the dispute-processing paradigm and theorizing about complex organizatons, the State, the economy, and the social construction of meaning. In Part IV, principal investigators from two major international comparative research projects on trial courts discuss the problems of comparative research and means of overcoming them; these suggested means are broadly applicable to research on legal institutions and dispute processing in diverse communities. Chapter footnotes, tables, and figures; 600 references. For individual articles, see NCJ 124401-24.