An organizational approach to the study of dispositions in United States District Courts is outlined, focusing on the pressures created by the combination of an increasing demand for service together with a relative decline in resources. The functions of courts are identified as adjudication, judicial administration, and policymaking. After stating some of the general theoretical issues involved in the approach taken here, courts are described in terms of the following organizational characteristics: (1) they are networks of organized activities with a mixed collegial and bureaucratic authority structure, as well as informal political processes of coordination, (2) heteronomous, (3) a labor-intensive professional service, (4) a branch of government, (5) nonspecialized, (6) passive, (7) vertically and horizontally interrelated with other organizations, (8) whose tasks are influenced by the demographic, economic, and legalgovernmental characteristics of the jurisdictional environment

Theoretically, the output of courts (e.g., the volume and nature of dispositions) is seen as determined by the environmental profile and the complexity of the task structure, with fiscal resources and organizational structure as intervening variables. These major organizational dimensions and variables are illustrated with data on the six District Courts of the Second Circuit.

A preliminary statistical analysis presents the effects of the jurisdictional environment on various types of filings in all United States District Courts in 1950, 1960, and 1973. The results confirm one aspect of the historically increasing involvement of government in the economy and society, namely, that which is mediated by the federal courts. The increasing governmental presence is shown in civil litigation involving the United States government as defendant and plaintiff, as well as in the contextual effects on filings of governmental agencies at the federal, state, and local levels.

The paper concludes with a brief discussion of three types of responses to the current crisis of the judiciary: the judicial response, emanating from the law-finding and adjudicatory role of courts; the bureaucratic response, reflecting the progressive transformation of adjudication into administration; and the technocratic response, emerging as a synthesis of adjudication and administration and stressing the policy-making function of courts within the context of the modern American politieal economy.

Several courts of limited jurisdiction currently exist in the federal judicial system, and new specialized courts have been proposed. Opponents of some specialized courts have pointed to the potential policy implications of judicial specialization, and their arguments merit attention. In this article the effects of specialization on the influence of litigant groups over judicial decisions and on the substance of judicial policy are analyzed in general terms. These effects are then examined in greater depth through a case study of the U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals. The findings are complex, but they indicate that specialization may have a significant impact on judicial behavior. This impact should be taken into account in decisions whether to create courts of limited jurisdiction.

Social scientists have offered numerous explanations for the support the public accords to the United States Supreme Court. Easton and Dennis have advanced the contention that such support is at least in part the product of youthful idealization of the Court, and this hypothesis has gained widespread, if tacit, acceptance. This paper argues that their conclusion is largely the consequence of a methodological artifact (the use of fixed-response survey instruments), and offers evidence that most children are not only unaware of the Supreme Court and its functions but demonstrate little or no positive affect toward that institution. If this is so, then why has the Easton-Dennis explanation persisted, despite its implausibility and lack of empirical grounding? One possibility is that the notion of a reservoir of trust in the Supreme Court is a useful rhetorical weapon for both judicial activists and those who advocate judicial restraint. But if public perceptions and evaluations of the Court are not strongly held, we must face the danger that those views will be susceptible to manipulation by people who do know and care about it—political, social, and economic elites.

Class struggle shapes every aspect of the law. In Buffalo, New York, the railroad strikes of 1892 and 1894, coupled with a major depression, heightened the level of class conflict. Hundreds of thousands of American workers had “taken to the road,” both as a form of political protest and to look for work. When one of these “tramp armies” reached Buffalo, it was greeted by a show of working class solidarity among the Polish immigrant community, and by massive police repression under the control of the bourgeoisie. This paper analyzes the economic, political, and social context of those events.