"How exactly is it done here?" Conducting cross-jurisdictional research with judges and court staff
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl.1702Keywords:
multijurisdictional research, court organization, court governance, data qualityAbstract
The legal, political, and organizational environment in which judges and court staff work affects their performance in significant ways. To ensure that researchers control for these effects, it is critical that they take sufficient time in the research design phase to identify relevant factors that might complicate their analyses or distort the interpretation of research findings. This article highlights common challenges of multijurisdictional research, including inconsistent use of terminology, differing organizational structures and procedures, and exogenous factors such as court governance, policymaking authority, funding, and local court culture. It also offers guidance to researchers on identifying and integrating these factors into their analyses to enhance the validity and utility of research findings.
Downloads
Metrics
Downloads:
13(S1)_Hannaford_Agor_OSLS 209
XML_13(S1)_Hannaford_Agor_OSLS 5
References
Church, T.A., et al., 1978. Justice Delayed: The Pace of Litigation in Urban Trial Courts [online]. Williamsburg: National Center for State Courts. Available at: https://ncsc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/ctadmin/id/0/.
Court Statistics Project, 2020. Trial Court Aggregation (2020 Update) [online]. Williamsburg: National Center for State Courts. Available at: https://www.courtstatistics.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/23833/CSP-Aggregation-Aug-2020.pdf#:~:text=Single%2Dtiered%20state%20courts%20(sometimes,Northern%20Mariana%20Islands%2C%20and%20Vermont
Court Statistics Project, 2023. CSP STAT [online]. Williamsburg: National Center for State Courts. Available at: https://www.courtstatistics.org/court-statistics/interactive-caseload-data-displays/csp-stat
Elek, J., 2022. Engaging courts & judicial professionals in research. Paper presented at the workshop on Empirical Research with Judicial Officers and Courts: Methods and Practices. Oñati: IISL, 23-24 June.
Hannaford-Agor, P., 2019. Caseload Highlights: The Landscape of Civil Litigation in State Courts: Examining Debt Collection, Landlord/Tenant and Small Claims Cases [online]. Williamsburg: National Center for State Courts. Available at: https://www.courtstatistics.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0027/53658/caseload-highlights.pdf
Hannaford-Agor, P., 2022. Our New Normal? How Covid-19 Accelerated Pre-Pandemic Trends in State Court Litigation. DePaul Law Review [online], 71(2), 801. Available at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/law-review/vol71/iss2/5
Hannaford-Agor, P., Graves S., and Spacek Miller, S., 2015. The Landscape of Civil Litigation in State Courts [online]. Williamsburg: National Center for State Courts. Available at: https://www.ncsc.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/13376/civiljusticereport-2015.pdf DOI: https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2700745
Mark, A., 2023. Perceptions of administrative policymaking authority: evidence from centralized and decentralized state court systems. Oñati Socio-Legal Series [online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl.1706 DOI: https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl.1706
McLuhan, Marshall and Fiore, Quentin, 1968. War and Peace in the Global Village. New York: Bantam Books.
Nagel, S.S., 1973. Comparing Elected and Appointed Judicial Systems. Beverly Hills: Sage.
National Center for State Courts, 2021. National Open Court Data Standards [online]. Williamsburg: National Center for State Courts. Available at: https://www.ncsc.org/services-and-experts/areas-of-expertise/court-statistics/national-open-court-data-standards-nods
Opeskin, B., 2023. Lazy Data? Using Administrative Records in Research on Judicial Systems. Oñati Socio-Legal Series [online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl.1624 DOI: https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4397487
Ostrom, B., et al., 2005. Court Cultures and Their Consequences. Court Manager [online], 20(1). Available at: https://ncsc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/ctadmin/id/986/
Soltoff, B.C., 2015. Agenda-setting in state courts of last resort [online]. Doctoral Dissertation. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University. Available at: https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/files/final_submissions/10993
State Court Organization, 2022. State Court Structures [online]. Williamsburg: National Center for State Courts. Available at: https://cspbr.azurewebsites.net/
Van Zyl Smit, J., 2015. The Appointment, Tenure, and Removal of Judges under Commonwealth Principles: A Compendium and Analysis of Best Practice. Report of Research Undertaken by Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law. London: British Institute of International and Comparative Law.
Virginia’s Judicial System, 2021. The Circuit Court [online]. Informational Pamphlet. Richmond. Available at: https://www.vacourts.gov/courts/circuit/circuitinfo.pdf
Weiss, C.W., 2019. Judges can’t use taxpayer funds to sue clerk in paper-files dispute, state supreme court rules. ABA Journal [online], 9 August. Available at: https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/judges-cant-use-taxpayer-funds-to-sue-clerk-in-paper-files-dispute-state-supreme-court-rules
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Paula Hannaford-Agor
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
OSLS strictly respects intellectual property rights and it is our policy that the author retains copyright, and articles are made available under a Creative Commons licence. The Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution No-Derivatives licence is our default licence, further details available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 If this is not acceptable to you, please contact us.
The non-exclusive permission you grant to us includes the rights to disseminate the bibliographic details of the article, including the abstract supplied by you, and to authorise others, including bibliographic databases, indexing and contents alerting services, to copy and communicate these details.
For information on how to share and store your own article at each stage of production from submission to final publication, please read our Self-Archiving and Sharing policy.
The Copyright Notice showing the author and co-authors, and the Creative Commons license will be displayed on the article, and you must agree to this as part of the submission process. Please ensure that all co-authors are properly attributed and that they understand and accept these terms.
