Collaborative Research on the Participation of Amici Curiae in the American Legal System

在过去的一个世纪里，学者们对有组织的政治利益侵入司法程序进行了评论。在此基础上，我们积累了大量关于利益集团参与司法诉讼的类型和频率的描述性数据。然而，大多数现有的研究都不是理论上的，而是在很大程度上是描述性的和具体的。发展理论导向工作的最大障碍是缺乏统一、系统和全面的数据，本项目旨在弥补这一缺陷。这个合作项目将建立一个多用户数据库，记录有组织的利益集团作为法庭之友参与联邦上诉法院和州最后法院的情况。对于至少载有一份法庭之友摘要的所有案件，该数据库将载有法庭之友的身份、他们参与的理由以及他们敦促法院采取的立场的资料。该数据库将连接到现有的数据库，包括美国国家科学基金会支持的美国最高法院和美国上诉法院数据库。该数据库将由调查人员每年更新。

Over the past century scholars have commented on the incursion of organized political interests into the judicial process. Based on this work, we have accumulated a good deal of descriptive data about the type and frequency of interest group participation in judicial proceedings. Most of the existing research, however, is not theoretically informed but rather largely descriptive and idiographic. The largest barrier to the development of theoretically-oriented work is the lack of uniform, systematic, and comprehensive data, a failing this project intends to remedy. This collaborative project will create a multi-user database on the participation of organized interests as amici curiae ("friends of the court") in federal appellate courts and in state courts of last resort. For all cases containing at least one amicus curiae brief, the database will house information on the identity of the amici, their reasons for participating, and the position they urged the court to adopt. This database will be linked to existing databases including, the NSF-supported U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Courts of Appeals Databases. The database will be updated annually by the investigators.