Compendium Project on the U.S. Courts of Appeals

Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo MI

Investigators

Abstract

This project is to merge several data bases pertaining to the federal courts of appeals and the US Supreme Court. The National Science Foundation has funded much of this infrastructure research. The idea that these data bases might some day be merged was considered when the data bases were designed and coding rules were coordinated to facilitate merger. Nevertheless, the individual data sets have been difficult to use and investigators must devote significant time to learning the intricacies of each data set. The merging supported by this grant will facilitate comparative analysis and widen the audience of potential users. The final products will be a User's Manual, a set of commands to perform some functions, and a series of tables describing certain trends on the courts of appeals. The material will be accessible via the internet.