United States Courts of Appeals Database Phase 1, 1925-1988

The Appeals Court Database Project was designed to create an extensive dataset to facilitate the empirical analysis of the votes of judges and the decisions of the United States Courts of Appeals. The data in this collection comprise the first phase of this project. A random sample of cases from each circuit for each year between 1925-1988 was coded for the nature of the issues presented, the statutory, constitutional, and procedural bases of the decision, the votes of the judges, and the nature of the litigants. The variables are divided into four sections: basic case characteristics, participation, issues, and judges and votes. There is a separate data file (Part 2) containing the number of cases with published decisions for each circuit/year between 1925 and 1990. These data are necessary to weight the variables in the main data file (Part 1).

Data and Resources

Field Value
accessLevel public
bureauCode {011:21}
catalog_@context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
catalog_@id https://www.justice.gov/data.json
catalog_conformsTo https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
catalog_describedBy https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
datagov_dedupe_retained 20210820133438
identifier 2638
issued 1998-05-27T00:00:00
language {eng}
license http://www.usa.gov/publicdomain/label/1.0/
modified 2006-03-30T00:00:00
programCode {011:061}
publisher Bureau of Justice Statistics
publisher_hierarchy Office of Justice Programs > Bureau of Justice Statistics
resource-type Dataset
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash a8a6a224e187c7e928f923be180e0808ef9e83e1
source_schema_version 1.1
Groups
  • AmeriGEOSS
  • National Provider
  • North America
Tags
  • amerigeo
  • amerigeoss
  • appellate-courts
  • case-processing
  • ckan
  • court-cases
  • decision-making
  • geo
  • geoss
  • judges
  • judicial-decisions
  • national
  • north-america
  • united-states
isopen False
license_id us-pd
license_title us-pd
maintainer Ask BJS Bureau of Justice Statistics (USDOJ)
maintainer_email askbjs@usdoj.gov
metadata_created 2025-11-22T18:54:09.048954
metadata_modified 2025-11-22T18:54:09.048959
notes The Appeals Court Database Project was designed to create an extensive dataset to facilitate the empirical analysis of the votes of judges and the decisions of the United States Courts of Appeals. The data in this collection comprise the first phase of this project. A random sample of cases from each circuit for each year between 1925-1988 was coded for the nature of the issues presented, the statutory, constitutional, and procedural bases of the decision, the votes of the judges, and the nature of the litigants. The variables are divided into four sections: basic case characteristics, participation, issues, and judges and votes. There is a separate data file (Part 2) containing the number of cases with published decisions for each circuit/year between 1925 and 1990. These data are necessary to weight the variables in the main data file (Part 1).
num_resources 1
num_tags 14
title United States Courts of Appeals Database Phase 1, 1925-1988