Studying Federal District Courts Through Published Cases: A Research Note

This article questions the appropriateness of using only published cases for social science research on federal district courts. First, the process of filtering cases from disposition to reporting is described. Then a sample of all civil cases terminated in one district court is traced to see which are reported in Lexis. Published cases tend to over-represent civil rights and government regulatory cases and to under-represent most other categories. They still, however, include only a small minority of the important cases, as measured by class action, interest group presence, or plaintiffs’ attorneys’ perception. Thus, published cases are neither a representative sample of district court cases nor a selection of all important cases.