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Trial Courts in the United States - The Travails of Exploration

NCJ Number
90992
Journal
Law and Society Review Volume: 17 Issue: 3 Dated: (1983) Pages: 407-423
Author(s)
H Jacob
Date Published
1983
Length
17 pages
Annotation
Research on trial courts has neglected much of what is involved in trial court processes, followed too many competing conceptual frameworks, and failed to use the types of samples required to justify generalization.
Abstract
Knowledge of how criminal courts operate is much more firmly grounded than knowledge of civil courts. Research on criminal courts has included many more jurisdictions and levels of courts, and a much larger number of participants have been examined using a wider variety of perspectives. There are only sketchy analyses of various types of civil proceedings, and the knowledge of participants in civil cases is also limited. Even less is known about what happens in court and the outcomes of proceedings. The study of trial courts does not lack theoretical models to guide researchers. The problem is that there are perhaps too many competing perspectives, and conflicts between them remain unresolved. The models most frequently competing for the attention of court researchers are (1) the organizational model, which deals with the interactional elements of trial court proceedings; (2) the role model, which examines the socialization of court professionals to their roles; and (3) the decisional model, which examines the dynamics of judicial decisions. Another of the great handicaps that researchers in the United States work under is uncertainty about the appropriate unit of analysis when studying trial courts. It is nearly impossible to draw a random sample of court activity; consequently, most studies are conducted with a collection of convenient courts, courtrooms, or cases, but it is difficult to know how such a collection relates to the universe of trial courts. A better approach would be to examine a single jurisdiction in depth, so that over the years detailed knowledge of trial courts would accumulate. Seventy-one references are provided.

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