A State Court's Clientele: Exploring the Strategy of Trial Litigation

This paper explores the activities of civil litigants in a state trial court between 1820 and 1970. Litigation is considered as essentially a political activity in which the parties utilize the judicial system to promote their respective interests. The analysis indicates that all parties initiate and defend cases consistently in narrow fields across time, representing interests to which the litigants are easily connected. Moreover, if litigation has a large political component, then the inequities and balances of power existing between parties in the wider community probably affect judicial outcomes. To pursue this notion, I classify the court's clientele as either individuals or organizations. Evidence suggests that utilization of the legal process in general, and case outcomes in particular, are determined in part by the pairing of litigants opposing each other. Individuals have more often initiated than defended actions, and the dollar value of their claims has steadily increased, especially against organized opponents. By contrast, organizations have defended much more often than they have filed claims, and their claims are consistently smaller than those pursued by individuals. In general, judicial demands and outcomes vary systematically but consistently over time, according to the legally active group involved, the adversary pairing, and the issues between them.