In Part I two essays provide both positive and critical assessments of the development of longitudinal research on trial courts. Part II presents some of the best recent longitudinal research based on trial court docket data, together with comments by investigators experienced in trial court research; they define more precisely the limits of this kind of longitudinal study. Part III presents an assortment of theoretical starting points for longitudinal research on trial courts, including the development of the dispute-processing paradigm and theorizing about complex organizatons, the State, the economy, and the social construction of meaning. In Part IV, principal investigators from two major international comparative research projects on trial courts discuss the problems of comparative research and means of overcoming them; these suggested means are broadly applicable to research on legal institutions and dispute processing in diverse communities. Chapter footnotes, tables, and figures; 600 references. For individual articles, see NCJ 124401-24.