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More Tales of Two Courts: Exploring Changes in the “Dispute Settlement Function” of Trial Courts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Richard Lempert
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Abstract

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This article uses Friedman and Percival's (1976) longitudinal survey of the caseloads of two California courts as a vehicle for addressing two conceptual issues that must be resolved in studies of the dispute settlement function of courts. First, one must decide whether the focus of inquiry is on the way courts function (i.e., act) or on the function that courts fill for some larger community. The methodological implications of this decision are discussed. Second, one must decide what counts as judicial contributions to dispute settlement. Seven possible contributions are identified. This article then reanalyzes Friedman and Percival's data on the Alameda and San Benito County courts, controlling for adult population. Reanalysis indicates that these data do not support the conclusion that the courts Friedman and Percival studied became functionally less important to community dispute settlement with increasing socio-economic development. This portion of the article suggests possible causes of some of the patterns observed, and discusses some of the problems that arise in working with longitudinal data culled from court dockets.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , Fall 1978 , pp. 91 - 138
Copyright
Copyright © 1978 Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Shari Seidman Diamond, Lawrence Friedman, Thomas Green, Robert Percival, David Seidman, and Francis Zemans for commenting on earlier drafts of this paper. I believe this version has benefitted substantially from their remarks. I would also like to thank Peter Ward for his aid in exploring the data and Kenneth Gerver for his research assistance. Work on this paper was supported by the Cook Funds of the University of Michigan Law School.

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