Ladders and Bushes: The Problem of Caseloads and Studying Court Activities over Time

The “litigation explosion” has been a frequent topic of concern in both academic circles and the popular press. This idea draws its polemical power from the assumption that litigation rates were lower in the past. But we presently know little about long-term trends in court activity. This article is a critical review of the existing literature on long-term litigation trends and the social development model which scholars have posited to explain changes in litigation patterns. Whether courts are indeed facing imminent crisis because of an explosion is still very much an open question; the extant literature offers no proof of an explosion. The available data do suggest, however, that previous studies may have been overly optimistic in expecting litigation trends to follow any single pattern. The questions about litigation rates will remain open until we are able to gain a fuller understanding of the trends in court activity over time.