Decision Selection in the Federal District Courts
Decision Selection in the Federal District CourtsWhile some have argued that relying on published, readily available opinions as a source for empirical analyses of federal district court decision making leads to biased results, many continue to do so largely because of convenience. In this project, I examine the potential theoretical and quantitative concerns related to this traditional approach and review the previous attempts to quantify this effect. Then, using newly collected data that span published and unpublished district court outcomes, I conduct a broad analysis of the statistical effect of our traditional methods of studying federal trial courts. The results indicate a number of judicial, litigant, and case specific characteristics lead to an increase in the likelihood of district court opinion publication and that published opinions are far more likely to lead to appeals than unpublished opinions. These results provide the most systematic evidence to date that published and unpublished district court outcomes are simply not comparable on many levels, a finding that has very real implications for empirical district court research.
[draft available upon request]
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