Cases typically mean very different things for lawyers and social scientists. For lawyers and judges, cases are decided one at a time. Indeed the particularity of cases has an exalted status in the law. The Constitution limits the jurisdiction of federal courts to “cases and controversies,” meaning that federal courts are not to be a forum for dispensing legal advice in the abstract. Rather, federal courts are intended to resolve specific contests among here and now opposing parties. As such, law cases require authoritative resolution. Someone wins; someone loses. Judges do not have the luxury of calling for more research or saying it may be this or it may be that. They must decide the case before them.

There is something akin to the process of generalization in legal reasoning. Lawyers and judges argue about the general principles in the case law or code law that should govern a legal outcome. And there is a strong norm (precedent or stare decisis) that “similar” cases should be decided the same way. Yet the individual case has a recognized significance of its own. Judges will never admit to deciding an individual case unfairly in order to preserve the pristine quality of a general principle.

For social scientists, in contrast, cases are the stuff from which generalizations are developed. The theory of probability, which informs much social scientific thinking, is based on repeated trials and random samples. The outcome of each unit sampled is not important in itself.