Multi-User Data Base for the U.S. Courts of Appeals

上诉法院仍然是最不为人了解的主要联邦机构之一。尽管这些法院在制定国家政策方面具有重要作用，并且在许多特殊研究中对其作用给予了关注，但由于缺乏跨联邦司法管辖区和长时间跨度的分析数据，限制了我们对司法决策和案件、争议、以及法院审理案件的结果。Songer博士试图通过开发一个多用户数据库来推进上诉法院的科学工作。资源将以1925年至1989年为重点，包括未发表和已发表的决定。抽样设计要求在所有12个司法管辖区进行大约40,000个案例。为了确保这些数据对许多潜在用户的科学效用，将对具有广泛理论意义的变量（例如，与投票、决策、问题、各方和争议的实质有关）的数据进行编码。对编码可靠性将给予大量的关注。此外，变量和编码惯例将与最高法院和联邦地区法院现有的大规模数据集兼容。一个由活跃的研究人员组成的监督委员会将指导Songer博士开展这项工作。该数据集将被存档，并通过密歇根大学政治和社会研究大学间联盟提供。该数据集的创建是对该领域的重大贡献。有了这组数据的可用性，新的研究将成为可能，否则在个人基础上进行的研究可能过于昂贵，而且它们可以更严格地进行，并对竞争性假设给予更大的关注。此外，结合其他各级法院的现有数据，这一资源将构成有史以来最全面的数据库，并允许对联邦司法系统所有三级的司法决策和行为进行直接比较。

The Courts of Appeals remain among the least comprehended of major federal institutions. Despite the importance of these courts in setting national policy and attention to their role in a number of particularistic studies, the absence of analytic data across federal jurisdictions and over large spans of time has limited our understanding of judicial decisionmaking and of the cases, controversies, and outcomes of issues heard by these courts. Dr. Songer seeks to advance scientific work on the Courts of Appeals through the development of a multi-user data base. The resource will focus on the years 1925 through 1989 and include both unpublished as well as published decisions. The sampling design calls for approximately 40,000 cases across all twelve jurisdictions. In order to insure the scientific utility of these data for many potential users, data on a broad range of variables of theoretical significance (e.g., relating to votes, decisions, issues, parties, and substance of the dispute) will be coded. Substantial attention will be paid to coding reliability. Also, variables and coding conventions will be compatible with existing large-scale data sets on the Supreme Court and the federal district courts. A Board of Overseers comprised of active researchers will provide guidance to Dr. Songer in the conduct of this work. The data set will be archived and made available through the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan. The creation of this data set is a major contribution to the field. With the availability of this data set, new studies will be possible that might otherwise be too expensive to undertake on an individual basis, and they can be done with greater rigor and attention to rival hypotheses. Also, in conjunction with extant data on other tiers of courts, this resource will comprise the most comprehensive data base ever assembled and permit direct comparisons of judicial decisionmaking and behavior across all three levels of the federal judicial system.