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New Measures of Judges’ Caseload for the Federal District Courts, 1964–2012

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2022

Philip Habel  and
Kevin Scott
Philip Habel*
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow
Kevin Scott
Affiliation:
Administrative Office of the US Courts
*
Contact the author at [email protected].
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Abstract

Over the past 30 years many observers of the federal courts have expressed concern over mounting dockets, arguing that the taxing workloads for federal judges could have a variety of negative consequences, including difficulties in judicial recruitment and retention. However, assessing the plausibility of those and similar claims requires the use of appropriate measures of judges’ workload. We introduce scholars and practitioners to new measures of caseload for the district courts available from 1964 through 2012. We detail the methodology for constructing our measures and then assess changes in caseload over time, both within and across courts. We argue that, in most cases, the preferred measure of caseload incorporates weighted filings and accounts for the service of senior status judges and vacancies. We conclude by pointing scholars toward additional research avenues that can be undertaken with our publicly available data.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Law and Courts , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , Spring 2014 , pp. 153 - 170
Copyright
© 2014 by the Law and Courts Organized Section of the American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.

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Footnotes

Data referenced in this project are publicly available through Harvard University’s Dataverse Network and the University of South Carolina’s Judicial Research Initiative (JuRI) collection. A previous version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, April 2012. The authors thank Laura Hatcher, Sheldon Goldman, and Christina Boyd for their comments on earlier versions. We thank Daniel Bennett, Dustin Heap, Lia Rohr, and Kyle Dvorak for research assistance. The views expressed here represent the opinions of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Administrative Office of the US Courts.

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