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Litigation Flow in Three United States Courts of Appeals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

J. Woodford Howard Jr.
J. Woodford Howard Jr.*
Affiliation:
Johns Hopkins University
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United States courts of appeals were created over four decades ago to help the Supreme Court enforce the supremacy' and uniformity of federal law. Until recently, however, their actual operations and functions in the American polity have received scant description and analysis (Carington, 1969: 542; Dolbeare, 1969: 373-404; Goldman and Jahnige, 1971; Richardson and Vines, 1970; Schick, 1970). This paper is a preliminary report of data gathered to assess the roles of the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Second, and Fifth Circuits in the federal legal system.' The report will: (1) describe the business of the three tribunals, (2) compare decisional patterns among them and the Supreme Court in the same cases, and (3) explore relationships among trial courts, intermediate courts, and the Supreme Court in the flow of federal litigation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , Fall 1973 , pp. 33 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © 1973 Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

Author's Note: This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the 1971 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. The author wishes to thank John E. Schofield, Joel Ish, James Hirschorn, John P. Crumrine, Jerry Goldman, Durwood Littlefield, Michael Nelson, and James S. Nathanson for help in analyzing the data. I am also grateful to Carl Baar, Matthew Crenson, Milton C. Cummings, Herbert Jacob, and Stephen V. Stephens for helpful criticism. The study was made under a fellowship granted by the Ford Foundation. However, the conclusions, opinions and other statements are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Ford Foundation.

References

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