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Case Congregations and Their Careers

NCJ Number
125512
Journal
Law and Society Review Volume: 24 Issue: 2 Dated: (1990) Pages: 371-395
Author(s)
M Galanter
Date Published
1990
Length
25 pages
Annotation
This article explores the way that a set of cases arising from a specific event, product, or claim forms a congregation of cases that displays common features and that manifests a discernable career over time.
Abstract
Such a career is related to, but not uniquely determined by, the course of the social activity underlying the case type. The relationship of activity and case congregation is mediated by a complex structure of dispute processing (including norms, cognitive dispositions, institutions of access, stakes and resources, social support, legal services, and more). In addition to these external influences, such litigation itself influences its future course by various effects on the underlying activity, on the organization of dispute processing, and on the legal setting. Such endogenous effects include holistic effects associated with the size and distribution of the congregation and career effects associated with the way the congregation unfolds over time. Delineation of these various effects suggests that litigation lives "a life of its own," partly independent of underlying events in the broader socioeconomic context, but that the regularities in the litigation process cannot be reduced to a comprehensive pattern, since the activity is interactive and strategic. 5 figures, 34 footnotes. (Author abstract modified)

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