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Four Decades Of Federal Civil Rights Litigation, Theodore Eisenberg
Four Decades Of Federal Civil Rights Litigation, Theodore Eisenberg
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Civil rights cases constitute a substantial fraction of the federal civil docket but that fraction has substantially declined from historic peaks. Trial outcomes, as in other areas of law, constitute a small fraction of case terminations and have changed over time. The number of employment discrimination trials before judges has been in decline for about 30 years, a trend also evident in contract and tort cases. The number of employment trials before juries increased substantially after the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1991 but has been in decline since 1997. In constitutional tort cases, the number of judge …
Summary Judgment Rates Over Time, Across Case Categories, And Across Districts: An Empirical Study Of Three Large Federal Districts, Theodore Eisenberg, Charlotte Lanvers
Summary Judgment Rates Over Time, Across Case Categories, And Across Districts: An Empirical Study Of Three Large Federal Districts, Theodore Eisenberg, Charlotte Lanvers
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Prior research on summary judgment hypothesizes a substantial increase in summary judgment rates after a trilogy of Supreme Court cases in 1986 and a disproportionate adverse effect of summary judgment on civil rights cases. This article analyzes summary judgment rates in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (EDPA) and the Northern District of Georgia (NDGA), for two time periods, 1980-81 and 2001-02. It also analyzes summary judgment rates for the Central District of California (CDCA) for 1980-81 and for other civil rights cases in the CDCA in 1975-76. The combined sample consists of over 5,000 cases. The three-district sample for 1980-81 …