Trial Courts in the United States: The Travails of Exploration

Abstract

This paper examines the last 12 years of research on trial courts. It focuses on three shortcomings of that research. The first is a failure to examine distributional questions about what kinds of benefits and sanctions are apportioned to which members of American society as well as the place of adjudication in the course of dispute processing. The second shortcoming is a failure to integrate the various theoretical perspectives which have won widespread acceptance. The third is an undue concentration on comparative designs to the neglect of longitudinal analyses within single jurisdictions.