Title: CASE MANAGEMENT IN FEDERAL COURTS: SOME CONTROVERSIES AND SOME RESULTS
Abstract: Judicial supervision of the civil docket is a relatively new phenomenon in American courts. Even in the federal courts, where it is best established, its antecedents do not go back more than a generation or so. Possibly this is best demonstrated by the fact that the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, despite their otherwise innovative character, make little direct reference to judicial direction and supervision of individual cases. They make no refer ence at all to the kind of detailed and aggressive scheduling common in federal courts. It will be the purpose of this paper to trace briefly some of the intellectual history of the new doctrine of judicial case management, and to examine some of the controversies the doctrine has engendered. In addition to the extensive empirical materials available through the regular reports of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, I will rely particularly on data and observation from the District Court Studies Project, recently completed (under my direction) by the Federal Judicial Center.1 This project was an effort to look behind the data routinely col lected on federal district courts. Our purpose was to determine or estimate the causes of the courts' very different statistical performance. The project involved extensive visits to ten district courts selected because their per formance differed greatly on both speed and productivity variables. A large data base was gathered from civil dockets. While we cannot claim to have conducted more than a preliminary effort, we have certainly shed new light on some significant questions. In fact case management has proved to be a fruitful area of policy science. Courts have a great range of policy discretion open to them, as the papers in this issue show. Nearly all of the policy questions judges and support people confront have quantitative and behavioral aspects. This is a largely untouched area for social science research.
Publication Year: 2016
Publication Date: 2016-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 3
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