The existence of a dispute has typically been the starting point for inquiries into dispute processing and resolution. This paper explores the origins of disputes in grievances and claims. It reports on a survey of households estimating the rates of grievances, claims, and disputes which could have been processed by a civil court of general jurisdiction. The paper also explores multivariate models of the probabilities that households experience substantial grievances, that claims for redress are made, and that disputes result. The models assess the contributions of household and problem characteristics to these transitions. By treating disputes as problematic outcomes of injurious experiences, the paper contributes to an assessment of the adversariness of American society.

This study of the relationship between businessmen and the civil courts in the Indonesian province of North Sumatra finds that Sumatran businessmen seldom use the courts either to collect retail debts or to settle commercial disputes among themselves. In fact, they were found to litigate disputes only when they hoped to salvage something from a failing business relationship, or when simply opening litigation could by itself help discharge a bureaucratic responsibility, satisfy a personal grudge, or harass a defendant into making an out-of-court settlement. The unusual cost structure of the civil courts, relatively low formal costs and relatively high informal costs, contributed to an unfavorable image of the courts as expensive, arbitrary, and inefficient dispute settlement mechanisms in the eyes of one important group of businessmen, the rubber exporters. Other characteristics of the exporters, their trading partners, and the social and economic relationships among them were found, however, to present more basic obstacles to the use of the courts in settling commercial disputes. These results then suggest some general conditions under which the capacity of a legal system to influence the development of commercial relations is severely limited.

A conception of corporate behavior as criminal has entered the scientific and popular vocabulary. This has been accompanied by an expansion of common law to include the activities of corporations. The definitional change is exemplified by the indictment and trial of Ford Motor Company on charges of reckless homicide. The present work focuses on the history of events surrounding this precedent action. Using information from media accounts, it explores the definitional processes by which the world's second largest automobile manufacturer was indicted as criminal. Content analysis of these reports suggests that the expansion of legal parameters to include formerly exempt behavior was preceded by the development of a vocabulary of deviance, personalization of harm, and attributions of nonrepentance to the offender. Public reevaluation of corporate actors and actions in terms of a vocabulary previously reserved for conventional criminality, the transformation of the definition from one of product defect and diffuse consumer cost to one of personal injury, and depiction of the corporation as refusing to recognize the harms associated with its acts, it is argued, opened the way to the application of criminal statutes.

This article explores economic determinants of lawyer behavior which in turn shape basic decisions affecting their clients in such areas as whether to file litigation, how much discovery to employ, whether to accept a settlement offer, and the like. Three methods of compensating lawyers are identified: fee-for-service, contingent-fee, and third-party payment. It is hypothesized that each of these methods creates very different configurations of economic incentives, some of which conflict with the best interests of clients. The possibilities for maximizing various of these economic goals are discussed along with the limits— economic and noneconomic—on such behavior. Finally, the article suggests some potential applications of this analysis for public policy and further research.

Much attention has been devoted recently to intercircuit doctrinal conflicts in the United States Courts of Appeals (Commission, 1975b: 30-32, 37-44). Less attention has been paid to the equally—if not more—serious problem of intracircuit doctrinal conflict, which causes difficulties for lawyers attempting to advise clients and for district judges trying to apply circuit law (Wasby, 1979). Observers have suggested that decreased frequency of communication among appellate judges leads to less consistency in their decisions. Where judicial interaction is infrequent, because of increased numbers of judges on a court or the judges' geographic dispersion, the “law of the circuit” tends toward disharmony (Commission, 1973: 19-20, and 1975b: 130; also Friendly, 1973: 45). The existence and extent of intracircuit inconsistency may thus be viewed as dependent variables, the number of judges and the judges' geographic dispersion, or both, as independent variables, and communication among judges as a key intervening variable.

I. THE PERSON

Leon Petrażycki (1861-1931), a legal theorist and sociologist, came from the Polish gentry of the Witebsk area, a territory historically Polish, but then—and now—a part of Russia. After preliminary studies as a medical student, he turned to the study of law at the universities in Kiev, St. Petersburg, Heidelberg, Berlin, Paris, and London. He received a master's degree in Roman Law from the University of Kiev and a doctorate in Law from the University of St. Petersburg. In 1897 Petrażycki became a professor at the University of St. Petersburg; he was quickly promoted to the rank of full professor and subsequently appointed Dean of the Faculty of Law—the first, in Russia, to be democratically elected to that position. He became a Member of the Russian Parliament (DUMA) and later spent some time in prison as a result of his political activities. During his twenty years in St. Petersburg, Petrażycki published several books on such subjects as political economy, private international law, civil law, psychology, and matters dealing with the relation between law, morals, and the state. Many of these books (written in Russian) were controversial and stimulated much discussion and response in Russia. A brief bibliography is contained in Appendix A.

This paper applies the methodology of economics to the analysis of resource allocation by households with actual or potential disputes. A model of household production of “legal welfare” is constructed. Household time and money investment decisions over time are analyzed within the household production framework. Finally, a simplified set of functions for measuring household demand for dispute resolution goods and services is presented and discussed.

The emergence and transformation of disputes, especially before they enter formal legal institutions, is a neglected topic in the sociology of law. We provide a framework for studying the processes by which unperceived injurious experiences are—or are not—perceived (naming), do or do not become grievances (blaming) and ultimately disputes (claiming), as well as for subsequent transformations. We view each of these stages as subjective, unstable, reactive, complicated, and incomplete. We postulate that transformations between them are caused by, and have consequences for, the parties, their attributions of responsibility, the scope of conflict, the mechanism chosen, the objectives sought, the prevailing ideology, reference groups, representatives and officials, and dispute institutions. We believe the study of transformations is important. Formal litigation and even disputing within unofficial fora account for a tiny fraction of the antecedent events that could mature into disputes. Moreover, what happens at earlier stages determines both the quantity and the contents of the caseload of formal and informal legal institutions. Transformation studies spotlight the issue of conflict levels in American society and permit exploration of the question of whether these levels are too low.

There is growing interest in the role that individual judgments play in moving people to seek recompense for perceived injuries. Social psychological theory and research may provide valuable clues about the types of judgments that are important in the development of disputes, and the facts that influence these judgments. In this paper, we describe relative deprivation, perceived control, equity, and attribution theories. We also discuss the relevance of these theories to dispute development, differential rates of problem perception, and the making of claims for redress. We conclude with suggestions for future research on the emergence of disputes.

There has been a timely shift in the focus of the sociology of law from an emphasis upon the characteristics, operations, and impact of the distinctively legal institutions and agents in modern societies, to an exploration of a more complex set of interrelationships between those institutions and agents and other social phenomena. Kidder (1975: 385ff) outlined the significance of this shift in focus for students of litigation. The Civil Litigation Research Project is itself an embodiment of the change. The early products of the Project which are presented in this issue of the Review are a testimony to the importance of the change. Indeed, it is hard to imagine an empirical research project in the sociology of law which could be of more theoretical significance and at the same time offer so many practical policy implications. By the same token, the articles contained in the Review provide the opportunity for appreciating some of the difficulties of, and dilemmas in, producing theoretically integrated and methodologically satisfactory studies in the sociology of law with the new focus. This is not to direct criticism particularly at the Project or at the authors of the articles in this issue of the Review. Rather, it is to point to a more general set of difficulties and dilemmas facing many who are currently striving to produce an empirically based sociology of law which attempts to place law in its more general social context.

The study of dispute settlement within the sociology of law has, for the most part, been organized around institutionalized processes of dispute settlement, which typically has meant around dispute settlement institutions. Although some researchers—notably in anthropology—have provided detailed natural histories of disputes, including information about denouements, most dispute settlement research has focused on the immediate inputs into the institutions of dispute settlement, on processes of dispute settlement, and on dispute resolutions both as outcomes of processes and outputs of institutions. Inputs of interest have included, on the one hand, parties and their representatives and, on the other, the disputes parties bring. Process has been broadly defined to include actions that occur within dispute settlement institutions and also organized patterns of behavior, such as Eskimo song duels, that may not be institution bound. Outcomes and outputs are typically confounded and operationalized as the decisions of institutions, although we know that in some settings these decisions do not necessarily determine party outcome.

The studies reported in this issue stem from a concerted, well-coordinated attempt to deal with the “hidden” dimension of disputing in the United States. The Civil Litigation Research Project (CLRP) was prompted by conclusions which have emerged in recent years from a variety of research traditions, all focused on issues of dispute settlement, or “dispute processing” as it has been relabeled. The hidden dimension of disputing was one of many issues which emerged from these disparate research traditions. Given the definition of the problem produced by earlier analyses, the decisions made by the CLRP investigators seem reasonable, and the results to date give some answers.

With each step forward, with each problem that we solve, we not only discover new and unsolved problems, but we also discover that where we believed we were standing on firm and safe ground, all things are, in truth, insecure and in a state of flux.

Karl Popper

(Popper, 1976: 87)

This article analyzes a survey of attorneys' motivations in choosing federal or state courts in diversity cases in four judicial districts. The study examines the importance of lawyers' perceptions of (1) local bias based upon residency, (2) the comparative efficiency and quality of state and federal courts, and (3) familiarity with and partiality for state or federal court procedures. It is shown that the rural versus urban setting of the court influences the perception of local bias and quality of the courts. Relative efficiency and differences in procedure between state and federal courts are also important factors affecting forum choice. The survey offers some insight into the potential impact of proposed reforms of the federal diversity of citizenship jurisdiction. The variation in motivations for forum choice among the districts provides little support for nationwide abolition of diversity jurisdiction.

This article develops an analytic framework for comparing dispute processing within a single institution and across different cultures, by focusing on the transformation of disputes. Case studies from diverse nonwestern and western settings are examined to show how disputes change as they are processed in response to the interests of various participants. Disputants, supporters, third parties, and relevant publics seek to rephrase and thus transform a dispute by imposing established categories for classifying events and relationships (narrowing), or by developing a framework which challenges established categories (expansion). Disputes may be expanded by adding new issues, by enlarging the arena of discussion, or by increasing the number and type of active participants. Thus, how the dispute is defined (language) and the roles played by various participants are critical features of the dispute. We focus on the agent of transformation, with special attention to the degree of audience participation, particularly in dispute expansion. We suggest the importance of expansion as a mechanism through which new rules emerge in the legal process, and through which social change is linked to legal change.

This article examines the behavior of civil litigants in a state general jurisdiction trial court over an extended period of time, 1820 to 1970. It focuses on whether the dispute resolution function of courts has diminished with social and economic development and rising litigation costs. The data consist of case records sampled at fifteen-year intervals. The samples are broken down into five case issues (domestic relations, torts, debts, nondebt contracts, and property) to determine the degree of change in the legal agenda. The rate of litigation (cases filed per 1000 population) is compared across issues, and disposition patterns over time are analyzed. The findings indicate that trial court processes have not totally converted to “rubber stamp” administration of routine petitions. Although the degree of judicial intervention into cases has changed, the court continues to play a significant role in the resolution of private conflicts.