The article first considers the comparability of data drawn from so many years of court case processing. The study examines change in litigation rates, the characteristics of pre-modern and modern fluctuations, and the meaning of trends and breaks in trends. The study's principal aim is to test the validity of two concepts central to the longitudinal study of civil litigation: the concept of development and the impact of industrialization. A critique of evolutionary models of litigation is based on data from the Bremen study, and the secular rise and fall of civil litigation is interpreted for five distinct periods. Results from other research on courts in the preindustrial era are summarized in tabular form. Although the Bremen series shows the highest litigation rate reported in the literature to date, the comparisons with other locations show surprising parallels, suggesting that Bremen is representative of a broader European development. The study concludes from the evidence of the Bremen time series that modern society handles far more potential legal conflict with relatively less litigation than did earlier societies. 2 tables, appended sources of data.