1 Friedman, Lawrence, “Civil Wrongs: Personal Injury Law in the Late 19th Century,” 1987 A.B.F. Res. J. 351, 345–55.Google Scholar

2 Munger, Frank, ed., “Special Issue: Longitudinal Studies of Trial Courts,” 24 Law & Soc'y Rev. (1990); On the Buffalo Conference, see Munger, “Trial Courts and Social Change: The Evolution of a Field,” 24 Law & Soc'y Rev. 217, 217 n.1 (1990).Google Scholar

3 Munger, , “Trial Courts,” 24 Law & Soc'y Rev. at 223.Google Scholar

4 In framing the issue in this way, I am drawing on Paul Diesing, How Does Social Science Work? Reflections on Practice (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991) (“Diesing, Social Science” also see David Hull, Science as a Process: An Evolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual Development of Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988) (“Hull, Science as Process”).Google Scholar

5 Friedman, Lawrence & Percival, Robert, “A Tale of Two Courts: Litigation in Alameda and San Benito Counties,” 10 Law & Soc'y Rev 267 (1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Lempert, Richard, “Docket Data and ‘Local Knowledge’: Studying the Court and Society Link Over Time,” 24 Law & Soc'y Rev. 321, 326–28 (1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Munger, , “Trial Courts,” 24 Law & Soc'y Rev.Google Scholar

8 E.g., Daniels, Stephen, “Caseload Dynamics and the Nature of Change: The Civil Business of Trial Courts in Four Illinois Counties,” 24 Law & Soc'y Rev 299 (1990); Munger, Frank, “Commercial Litigation in West Virginia State and Federal Courts, 1870–1940,” 30 Am. J. legal Hist. 322 (1986); Stookey, John, “Trials and Tribulations: Crisis, Litigation and Legal Change,” 24 Law & Soc'y Rev 497 (1990); id., “Economic Cycles and Civil Litigation,” 11 Just. Sys. J. 282 (1986).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 E.g., Stephen Daniels, “A Tangled Tale: Studying State Supreme Courts,” 22 Law & Soc'y Rev 833 (1988); Robert Kagan, Bliss Cartwright, Lawrence Friedman, & Stanton Wheeler, “The Business of State Supreme Courts, 1870–1970,” 30 Stan. L. Rev. 121 (1977); Kagan et al, “The Evolution of State Supreme Courts,” 76 Mich L Rev. 961 (1978); John Stookey, “A Longitudinal Study of the Docket Composition Theory of Conflict and Consensus: Arizona Supreme Court, 1913–76,”in Sheldon Goldman & Charles Lamb, eds., Judicial Conflict and Consensus: Behavioral Studies of American Appellate Courts (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1986). Also see John Gates & Charles Johnson, eds., The American Courts: A Critical Assessment (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1991) (“Gates & Johnson, American Courts”); of particular interest are three essays: Wayne McIntosh, “Courts and Socioeconomic Change”; William McLauchlan, “Courts and Caseloads”; and John Gates, “Theory, Methods, and the New Institutionalism in Judicial Research.”.Google Scholar

10 With regard to the social sciences, Diesing, Social Science 358, notes: “It is quite clear that there is no possibility of anything remotely like a unified theory of society in the foreseeable future …. A plurality of mutually incompatible theories and unrelated communities exists and will continue to exist; misunderstanding and useless disputes will continue.”.Google Scholar

11 See Diesing, Social Science 149–299; Hull, Science as Process 111–276 & 432–76.Google Scholar

12 “Resistance to Theory” is a section heading in Munger's introductory essay for the Special Issue. See Munger, “Trial Courts,” 24 Law & Soc'y Rev. at 223. Perhaps not coincidentally, it is also the title of a major work in literary criticism by one of the intellectual founders of the deconstruction movement; see Paul De Man, Resistance to Theory (Minneap olis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986).Google Scholar

13 See Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary 985 (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam Co., 1977).Google Scholar

14 Roy D'Andrade, “Three Scientific World Views and the Covering Law Model” (“D'Andrade, ‘Three World Views’”), in Donald Fisk & Richard Shweder, eds., Metatheory in Social Science: Pluralism and Subjectivities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986) (“Fisk & Shweder, Metatheory”).Google Scholar

15 Abraham Kaplan, The Conduct of Inquiry 3–11 (San Francisco: Chandler, 1964).Google Scholar

16 D'Andrade, “Three World Views” at 20–21.Google Scholar

17 Diesing, Social Science x.Google Scholar

18 D'Andrade, “Three World Views” at 21.Google Scholar

19 Id.Google Scholar

20 Samuel Krislov, “Theoretical Perspectives on Case Load Studies; A Critique and Beginning,” in Keith Boyum & Lynn Mather, eds., Empirical Theories about Courts 163–64 (New York: Longman, 1983) (“Krislov, ‘Theoretical Perspectives’”).Google Scholar

21 D'Andrade, “Three World Views” at 23.Google Scholar

22 Diesing, Social Science 106.Google Scholar

23 Id. at 109.Google Scholar

24 Id. at 110.Google Scholar

25 Id. at 124.Google Scholar

26 Friedman, 1987 A.B.F. Res. J. (cited in note I). Munger, In his editor's “Afterword” for the Special Issue (24 Law & Soc'y Rev. at 597), flatly denies the conceptual possibility of a court-centered focus: “legal institutions and community interpenetrate so thoroughly that legal institutions simply cannot be understood without explicit attention to their community context.” No one, especially not Friedman, would deny this; and there is nothing about this obvious fact that precludes a court-centered focus. The logic of Munger's argument only makes sense if one shares the notion that dispute resolution must be the sine qua non of law and society research. In contrast, see Gates & Johnson, American Courts, especially the chapters by McIntosh and Gates (all cited in note 9).Google Scholar

27 Krislov, “Theoretical Perspectives” at 161.Google Scholar

28 Id. at 162.Google Scholar

29 Id. at 162–63.Google Scholar

30 Cooter, Robert & Rubinfeld, Daniel, “Trial Courts: An Economic Perspective,” 24 Law & Soc'y Rev. 533, 533 (1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Id. at 546.Google Scholar

32 Reiss, Albert, “Longitudinal Study of Trial Courts: A Plea for Development of Explanatory Models,” 24 Law & Soc'y Rev. 345, 345 (1990).Google Scholar

33 Id.Google Scholar

34 Id. at 346–47.Google Scholar

35 Id. at 351.Google Scholar

36 One of the most maddening aspects of the Special Issue is that it makes no discrimination among the warring orthodoxies that appear in it, leaving the scholar actually doing longitudinal research with contradictory criticisms and agendas with which to contend.Google Scholar

37 Mather, Lynn, “Dispute Processing and a Longitudinal Approach to Courts,” 24 Law & Soc'y Rev. 357, 359–60 (1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Engel, David, “Litigation across Space and Time: Courts, Conflict, and Social Change,” 24 Law & Soc'y Rev 333 (1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 Id. at 334–36.Google Scholar

40 Id. at 334.Google Scholar

41 Id.Google Scholar

42 Id. at 335.Google Scholar

43 Lempert, , 24 Law & Soc'y Rev. (cited in note 6).Google Scholar

44 Id.Google Scholar

45 Id. at 327.Google Scholar

46 Id Google Scholar

47 Id at 327–28.Google Scholar

48 Id. at 328.Google Scholar

49 Id at 332 n.15.Google Scholar

50 Id. at 329.Google Scholar

51 Id at 324–26.Google Scholar

52 Id at 327 n.7.Google Scholar

53 Id at 322–23.Google Scholar

54 Id at 328–29.Google Scholar

55 Id. at 330.Google Scholar

56 Id. at 323.Google Scholar

57 Lawrence Friedman & Robert Percival, The Roots of Justice: Crime and Punishment in Alameda County, California, 1870–1910 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981).Google Scholar

58 For an interesting interpretation of similar clashes in a very different arena (evolutionary biology) see Hull, Science as Process (cited in note 4).Google Scholar

59 Richard Shweder & Donald Fisk, “Introduction: Uneasy Social Science,” in Fisk & Shweder, Metatheory 1–2 (cited in note 14).Google Scholar