Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T01:59:19.148Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Continuity and Change in Patterns of Case Handling: A Case Study of Two Rural Counties

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2024

Stephen Daniels
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

This article examines the patterns and changes in the way trial courts have handled both civil and criminal matters. It does so by looking for similarities between the civil and criminal dockets in all levels of trial courts in two rural counties in Illinois for a 90-year period (1870-1960). The data from these sites suggest that there may be an overall pattern in the way matters are handled, one that has fluctuations and changes within it but seems to have persisted over time. About 90 percent of the matters filed in the two counties did not involve a contested hearing or judgment. The pattern of handling matters was characterized, instead, by shifts between the routine processing of uncontested matters and matters that dropped out of the courts short of judgment. Contested matters were always the exception and not the rule. Contrary to some claims found in the literature, the shifts within the pattern seem to reflect changes in the mix of court business rather than some fundamental change driven by environmental factors and marking an overall demise of trials.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , 1985 , pp. 381 - 420
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 by The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

*

Research supported in part by the National Science Foundation, Law and Social Sciences Program, Grant Number SES-8010988. The author wishes to acknowledge the valuable suggestions and help of Robert Hayden, Richard Lempert, and Joanne Martin.

References

ALFINI, James J. (1981) “Introductory Essay: The Misdemeanor Courts,” 6 Justice System Journal 5.Google Scholar
ALLEN, H.K. (1937) “Administration of Minor Justice in Selected Illinois Counties,” 31 Illinois Law Review 1047.Google Scholar
ALSCHULER, Albert W. (1979) “Plea Bargaining and Its History,” 13 Law & Society Review 211.Google Scholar
ALSCHULER, Albert W. (1983) “Implementing the Criminal Defendant's Right to Trial: Alternatives to the Plea Bargaining System,” 50 University of Chicago Law Review 931.Google Scholar
BOGUE, Allan (1963) From Prairie to Corn Belt: Farming on the Illinois and Iowa Prairies in the Nineteenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
BRADLEY, M. and M., ENNIS (1940, 1975) The Greenview Scrap Book: A History of Greenview, Illinois, 1818 to 1975. Greenview, IL: Bradley and Ennis.Google Scholar
CASPER, Gerhard and Richard, POSNER (1976) The Workload of the Supreme Court. Chicago: American Bar Foundation.Google Scholar
DANIELS, Stephen (1984) “Ladders and Bushes: The Problems of Caseloads and Studying Court Activities over Time,” 1984 American Bar Foundation Research Journal 751.Google Scholar
DODD, Walter and Sue Hutchison, DODD (1928) Government in Illinois. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
EISENSTEIN, James and Herbert, JACOB (1977) Felony Justice: An Organizational Analysis of Criminal Courts. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
ENGEL, David (1983) “Cases, Conflict, and Accommodation: Patterns of Legal Interaction in a Small Community,” 1983 American Bar Foundation Research Journal 803.Google Scholar
FEELEY, Malcolm M. (1979a) The Process is the Punishment: Handling Cases in a Lower Criminal Court. New York: Russell Sage.Google Scholar
FEELEY, Malcolm M. (1979b) “Perspectives on Plea Bargaining,” 13 Law & Society Review 199.Google Scholar
FEELEY, Malcolm M. (1982) “Plea Bargaining and the Structure of the Criminal Process,” 7 Justice System Journal 338.Google Scholar
FRIEDMAN, Lawrence M. (1976) “Trial Courts and Their Work in the Modern World,” 4 Jahrbuch für Rechtssoziologie und Rechtstheorie 25.Google Scholar
FRIEDMAN, Lawrence M. (1979) “Plea Bargaining in Historical Perspective,” 13 Law & Society Review 247.Google Scholar
FRIEDMAN, Lawrence M. and Robert J., PERCIVAL (1976) “A Tale of Two Courts: Litigation in Alameda and San Benito Counties,” 10 Law & Society Review 267.Google Scholar
Robert J., PERCIVAL (1981) The Roots of Justice: Crime and Punishment in Alameda County, California, 1870-1910. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
GALANTER, Marc (1983) “Reading the Landscape of Disputes: What We Know and Don't Know (and Think We Know) about Our Allegedly Contentious and Litigious Society,” 31 UCLA Law Review 4.Google Scholar
GAMBITTA, Richard and Marlynn L., MAY (1982) “Judicial Reform, the Myth of the Trial, and the Decline of Confidence in the Courts,” in DuBois, P. (ed.), The Politics of Judicial Reform. Lexington: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
GIESE, Mildred J. (1958) “Why Illinois Proposes to Abolish Justice of the Peace Courts,” 46 Illinois Bar Journal 754.Google Scholar
HALLER, Mark H. (1979) “Plea Bargaining: The Nineteenth Century Context,” 13 Law & Society Review 273.Google Scholar
HEUMANN, Milton (1975) “A Note on Plea Bargaining and Case Pressure,” 9 Law & Society Review 515.Google Scholar
HURST, James Willard (1980-81) “The Functions of Courts in the United States: 1950-1980,” 15 Law & Society Review 401.Google Scholar
KRISLOV, Samuel (1983) “Theoretical Perspectives on Case Load Studies: A Critique and Beginning,” in Boyum, K. and Mather, L. (eds.), Empirical Theories about Courts. New York: Longman's Inc.Google Scholar
LANGBEIN, John H. (1980) “Torture and Plea Bargaining,” 58 The Public Interest 43.Google Scholar
LAURENT, Francis (1959) The Business of a Trial Court, 100 Years of Cases: A Census of the Actions and Special Proceedings in the Circuit Court for Chippewa County, Wisconsin, 1855-1954. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
LEEGE, David C. and Wayne L., FRANCIS (1974) Political Research: Design, Measurement and Analysis. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
LEMPERT, Richard (1978) “More Tales of Two Courts: Exploring Changes in the ‘Dispute Settlement Function’ of Trial Courts,” 13 Law & Society Review 91.Google Scholar
LIPETZ, Marcia J. (1984) Routine Justice: Processing Cases in Women's Court. New Brunswick: Transaction Books.Google Scholar
LITTLE, Craig B. and Christopher P., SHEFFIELD (1983) “Frontiers and Criminal Justice: English Private Prosecution Societies and American Vigilantism in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” 48 American Sociological Review 796.Google Scholar
MATHER, Lynn (1979) Plea Bargaining or Trial: The Process of Criminal-Case Disposition. Lexington: D.C. Heath.Google Scholar
McINTOSH, Wayne (1980-81) “150 Years of Litigation and Dispute Settlement: A Court Tale,” 15 Law & Society Review 823.Google Scholar
McINTOSH, Wayne (1982) “A Long-Range View of Litigators and Their Demands.” Paper delivered at 1982 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Denver, CO, September.Google Scholar
SCHULHOFER, Stephen (1984) “Is Plea Bargaining Inevitable?” 97 Harvard Law Review 1037.Google Scholar
SCRIVEN, Michael (1970) “Methods of Reasoning and Justification in Social Science and Law,” 23 Journal of Legal Education 189.Google Scholar
SIMPSON, George G. (1961) Principles of Animal Taxonomy. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
SMITH, Chester H. (1927) “The Justice of the Peace System in the United States,” 15 California Law Review 118.Google Scholar
THOMAS, Stanley (1958) “Jurisdiction of Illinois County and Probate Courts,” 46 Illinois Bar Journal 606.Google Scholar
TRUBEK, David M., GROSSMAN, Joel B., FELSTINER, William L.F., KRITZER, Herbert M. and Austin, SARAT (1983) Civil Litigation Research Project Final Report. Madison: University of Wisconsin Law School.Google Scholar
UNDERWOOD, Robert C. (1971) “The Illinois Judicial System,” 47 Notre Dame Lawyer 247.Google Scholar
WUNDER, John (1979) Inferior Courts, Superior Justice: A History of the Justices of the Peace on the Northwest Frontier, 1853-1889. Westport: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
ZEISEL, Hans (1981) “The Disposition of Felony Arrests,” 1981 American Bar Foundation Research Journal 407.Google Scholar