Underclaiming and Overclaiming

Abstract

Arguments that we have too much litigation (overclaiming) or too little (underclaiming) cannot be valid without estimating how many of the undecided claims that are brought (actual claims) or not brought (potential claims) have or lack legal merit. We identify the basic conceptual structure of such underclaiming and overclaiming arguments, which entails inferences about the distribution of actual or potential claims by their probability of success on the merits within a claims‐processing institution. We then survey the available methods for estimating claim merit.

Ideology, Disadvantage, and Federal District Court Inmate Civil Rights Filings: The Troubling Effects of Pro Se Status

“…However, because class action reporting in the FJC data severely undercounts actual class actions and is rife with reporting errors (Willging et al 1996), I also include other cases by text processing the case name—I filter by whether the plaintiff name includes an “et al,” under the expectation that cases with more plaintiffs are more likely to be evidence of systematic deficiencies within prison systems. It is not one prisoner claiming they wanted beige towels instead of white ones (Pandya & Siegelman 2013), for example, but instead systematic problems faced by multiple inmates that may be more likely to receive a favorable hearing among judges. Table 5 filters to class actions and those cases with an “et al” listed in the plaintiff name, a significant decrease in the sample size, only about four percent of the data.…”

“…However, because class action reporting in the FJC data severely undercounts actual class actions and is rife with reporting errors (Willging et al 1996), I also include other cases by text processing the case name-I filter by whether the plaintiff name includes an "et al," under the expectation that cases with more plaintiffs are more likely to be evidence of systematic deficiencies within prison systems. It is not one prisoner claiming they wanted beige towels instead of white ones 18 (Pandya & Siegelman 2013), for Though, this case is a misleading frivolous one, as the claim actually centered around the unfair confiscation of beige towels that the inmate's family had purchased for him (Newman 1996).…”