Judicial process and the exercise of judicial judgment can be illuminated by the development of empirical data on court decisions from judicial institutions at different levels. Dr. Songer's planning project develops a design for the construction of a multi-user data base on cases considered by the U.S. Courts of Appeal. The purpose of the planning grant is to assess the scientific potential of a multi-use data base on the courts of appeal, identify the scope and parameters of such a data resource, and develop a working model for the systematic, reliable, and standardized collection of data. In order to ensure that the data base project is designed to maximize the utility for potential users, Dr. Songer's project includes active work with an advisory committee to secure input from a broad range of public law scholars on issues of the theoretical utility of the data set, its methodological significance, its appropriateness in terms of current and anticipated future scholarly interests, the costs and benefits of standardization, the gains to be made from investing in the inclusion of unpublished opinions, data definition, and reliability. It is hoped that this planning grant will permit the development of a data set that will contain measures of theoretical and practical significance comparable to those being developed for other data sets on the Supreme Court and the district courts.
