Federal Court Cases: Integrated Data Base, 2010 (ICPSR 30401)
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 appellate and civil cases: filing and termination. The termination data (archived in this data collection) contain information on both filing and terminations, while the pending data (archived as a separate data collection) contain only filing information on the most recent pending cases. The unit of analysis for the appellate and civil terminations data is the case. This collection also contains data on criminal cases in federal courts. However, the unit of analysis for the criminal data is the defendant, and a defendant can be included in several cases.
Access Notes
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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.
Data users interested in the Civil Terminations Data -- PLT and DEF Included (DS4) will need to specify in the Restricted Data Use Agreement form why those variables are necessary.
Dataset(s)
Study Description
Citation
Federal Judicial Center. Federal Court Cases: Integrated Data Base, 2010. ICPSR30401-v2. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2012-11-26. doi:10.3886/ICPSR30401.v2
Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR30401.v2
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Scope of Study
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:
- 2010
Date of Collection:
- 2010
Unit of Observation: Appellate terminations data -- case, Civil terminations data -- case, Criminal data -- defendant
Universe: All federal court cases in the United States in 2010.
Data Types: administrative records data, event/transaction data
Data Collection Notes:
Starting with the year 2001, each year of data for Federal Court Cases Integrated Data Base is released by ICPSR as a separate study number. Data for the years 1970-2000 can be found in FEDERAL COURT CASES: INTEGRATED DATA BASE, 1970-2000 (ICPSR 8429).
Starting with year 2008, the appellate pending and civil pending data are archived as a separate data collection.
Methodology
Data Source:
computerized court records
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:
- Created variable labels and/or value labels.
- Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.
- Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
Version(s)
Original ICPSR Release: 2011-11-11
Version History:
- 2012-11-26 The docket numbers were recoded to 9-fill to protect the confidentiality of individuals involved in the case.
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