Patterns of Appellate Litigation, 1945–1990

Harrington, Christine; Ward, Daniel

doi:10.4135/9781483329901.n9

Cited by 9 publications

(13 citation statements)

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“…Scholars generally agree that litigation rates are determined by a complex combination of political, economic, and social factors (Daniels 1982;McIntosh 1990;Harrington and Ward 1995;Posner 1997). The choice to file a lawsuit is the most basic indication of a citizen's willingness to seek conflict and dispute resolution via the judiciary rather than another state political institution or alternative mechanism.…”

Section: Data Model Specification and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Social development theory suggests that states with high population density, high poverty rates, significant levels of income inequality, and relatively urbanized and industrial populations are more likely to experience increases in tort filings (Yates, et al 2001;Harrington & Ward 1995). The increase in litigation rates may be attributed to two factors.…”

Section: Social and Economic Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Studies employing these two primary theoretical orientations have met with varying success and empirical results have not always been very consistent. Some of this inconsistency is likely attributable to differences in studies' locus or time frame; however, a handful of scholars have taken this state of affairs as a cue to broaden the theoretical approach to account for institutional legal considerations (Harrington and Ward 1995;Posner 1997;Hanssen 1999;Yates et al 2001).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Scholars have attempted to explain variation in rates of litigation, both over time and across jurisdictions, by investigating legal and extra-legal determinants of citizens' invocation of the court system (Daniels 1982;Grossman et al 1982;Grossman and Sarat 1975;Harrington and Ward 1995;Marvel 1994;McIntosh 1983McIntosh , 1990Posner 1997;Roper 1986;Schmidt, Browne, and Lee 1997;Stookey 1986;Yates, Davis, and Glick 2001). Such studies have primarily drawn upon two broad theoretical orientations to account for differences in legal mobilization -political culture and social development.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Do Institutions Really Matter? Assessing the Impact of State Judicial Structures on Citizen Litigiousness

2006

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Section: Data Model Specification and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Social and Economic Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Do Institutions Really Matter? Assessing the Impact of State Judicial Structures on Citizen Litigiousness

2006

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“…Although research focusing on trial courts (e.g., Feeley 1989;Heumann 1978;Church 1995) has cast doubt on the validity of caseload as the primary explanation for the ubiquity and persistence of plea bargaining in criminal cases, these analyses do imply that case volume encourages the use of pleas as a way for judges to dispose of cases quickly. At the court of appeals level, one study conducted by Christine Harrington and Daniel Ward identified a tendency toward increased use of summary dispositions and procedural terminations as a way for judges to cope with caseload pressure (Harrington & Ward 1995). These authors also reported an inverse relationship between case volume and reversals.…”

Section: Caseloadmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Incidence and Structure of Conflict on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit

Unah

2001

Law & Policy

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In 1982, Congress established the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, a specialized court, with the objective of reducing judicial conflict and harmonizing circuit law in specific policy areas of special complexity. This article examines the incidence and determinants of judicial conflict on the U.S. courts of appeals, focusing specifically on the Federal Circuit. Using international trade and customs regulation cases decided during the 1982 to 1995 terms, the analysis reviews three possible explanations of judicial conflict: policy‐oriented, sociolegal, and organizational. The analysis shows that conflict appears in 8.4 percent of the trade and customs regulation decisions rendered by the Federal Circuit during the period of study. The policy direction of Federal Circuit decisions and the court’s hierarchical relationship with lower specialized courts provide the strongest explanation for the emergence of conflict on the court. Organizational factors such as panel composition evinced rather anemic explanatory capacity. The results raise an important functional similarity between the Federal Circuit and the generalist courts of appeals. Contrary to the laments of legal practitioners that conflict on the Federal Circuit is excessive relative to conflict on the generalist circuit courts, this analysis finds little support for that claim. Rather, the level of overt conflict on the court is actually low and corroborates conflict levels that have been reported for other U.S. courts of appeals.

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Acting When Elected Officials Won't: Federal Courts and Civil Rights Enforcement in U.S. Labor Unions, 1935–85

Frymer¹

2003

Am. Pol. Sci. Rev.

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U sing the racial integration of national labor unions as a case study, I find that courts played an important and meaningfully autonomous role in integrating unions while elected officials largely failed to act. Courts, unlike elected officials, offered civil rights groups relatively easy access to the legal agenda. In response to thousands of cases in federal courts, judges rewrote key civil rights statutes, oversaw the implementation of their rulings, and used attorneys' fees and damage awards to impose significant financial costs on resistant unions. Court power was the product of multiple and historically contingent forces that involved the interaction of elected officials, civil rights activists, and the legal community. Elected officials delegated to the courts the power to enforce civil rights laws and tacitly endorsed procedural changes that augmented the courts' institutional powers and the legal community's professional influence. In response, judges and lawyers promoted and implemented a civil rights agenda far beyond the endorsement of elected officials. An historical-institutional approach helps explain how courts achieved and wielded independent power and the consequences of their action for civil rights, labor unions, and the American state.

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Patterns of Appellate Litigation, 1945–1990

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

Do Institutions Really Matter? Assessing the Impact of State Judicial Structures on Citizen Litigiousness

Do Institutions Really Matter? Assessing the Impact of State Judicial Structures on Citizen Litigiousness

The Incidence and Structure of Conflict on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit

Acting When Elected Officials Won't: Federal Courts and Civil Rights Enforcement in U.S. Labor Unions, 1935–85

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