Federal Court Cases: Integrated Data Base, 2003 (ICPSR 4026)

Principal Investigator(s): Federal Judicial Center

Summary: The purpose of this data collection is to provide an official public record of the business of the federal courts. The data originate from district and appellate court offices throughout the United States. Information was obtained at two points in the life of a case: filing and termination. The termination data contain information on both filing and terminations, while the pending data contain only filing information. (more info)

Series: Federal Court Cases: Integrated Database Series

• One or more files in this study are not available for download due to special restrictions; consult the restrictions note to learn more. Additional information can also be found in the Use Agreement.

  The data are restricted from general dissemination. Users interested in obtaining these data must complete a Restricted Data Use Agreement form and specify the reasons for the request. A copy of the Restricted Data Use Agreement form can be requested by calling 800-999-0960. Researchers can also download this form as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file from the download page associated with this dataset. Completed forms should be returned to: Director, National Archive of Criminal Justice Data, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, Institute for Social Research, P.O. Box 1248, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1248, or by fax: 734-647-8200.

Federal Judicial Center. Federal Court Cases: Integrated Data Base, 2003. ICPSR04026-v6. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2012-06-18. doi:10.3886/ICPSR04026.v6

Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR04026.v6

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Summary:   The purpose of this data collection is to provide an official public record of the business of the federal courts. The data originate from district and appellate court offices throughout the United States. Information was obtained at two points in the life of a case: filing and termination. The termination data contain information on both filing and terminations, while the pending data contain only filing information.

Subject Terms:   administration, appellate courts, case dismissal, case processing, civil law, court cases, criminal law, defendants, disposition (legal), federal courts, judicial decisions, legal systems, pretrial procedures, records, trial courts, trial procedures

Smallest Geographic Unit:   County

Geographic Coverage:   United States

Time Period:  

• 2003

Date of Collection:  

• 2003

Unit of Observation:   Appellate terminations data -- case Civil terminations data -- case Criminal data -- defendant

Universe:   All federal court cases in the United States in 2003

Data Types:   event/transaction data

Data Collection Notes:

Starting with the year 2001, each year of data for Federal Court Cases is released by ICPSR as a separate study number. Federal Court Cases data for the years 1970-2000 can be found in FEDERAL COURT CASES: INTEGRATED DATA BASE, 1970-2000 (ICPSR 8429).

Data Source:

computerized court records, and administrative records

Extent of Processing:  ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

• Performed consistency checks.
• Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Original ICPSR Release:  2004-06-17

Version History:

• 2012-06-18 The civil data files were updated.
• 2011-04-12 All parts are being moved to restricted access and will be available only using the restricted access procedures.
• 2005-04-22 Data files for Part 4, Civil Pending, 2003, in both restricted and unrestricted forms and Part 5, Criminal Data, 2003, have been added along with corresponding SAS and SPSS setup files and codebooks in PDF format.
• 2005-01-07 A restricted data file for Part 3, Civil Terminations, 2003, has been added to the data collection. The unrestricted data file for Part 3 and its corresponding SAS and SPSS setup files have been updated. The codebook has been modified to reflect these changes.

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