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Trial Courts in the United States: The Travails of Exploration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Herbert Jacob
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Abstract

This paper examines the last 12 years of research on trial courts. It focuses on three shortcomings of that research. The first is a failure to examine distributional questions about what kinds of benefits and sanctions are apportioned to which members of American society as well as the place of adjudication in the course of dispute processing. The second shortcoming is a failure to integrate the various theoretical perspectives which have won widespread acceptance. The third is an undue concentration on comparative designs to the neglect of longitudinal analyses within single jurisdictions.

Type
Presidential Address
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , 1983 , pp. 407 - 423
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 The Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this paper was delivered as the Presidential Address to a luncheon plenary session of the Law and Society Association on June 5, 1982, at Toronto, Ontario. I am grateful to James Eisenstein, Richard O. Lempert, and Malcolm Feeley for their comments on the earlier version.

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