Abstract
Recent examinations of federal litigation trends show that the use of trials by the federal courts is declining. This knowledge has invariably raised the question of whether the use of trials in state courts is also declining. Unfortunately, the ability to conduct parallel examinations of state court litigation trends has been hampered by the lack of available state court disposition data. In this article we introduce the “State Court Disposition Trends” database and analyze, for the first time, long‐term trial trends in the state courts. The present analysis examines 27‐year trends of trials and trial rates for criminal, civil, and felony cases, and 11‐year trends of trials and trial rates for general civil cases. We find that despite substantial growth in the number of case dispositions, there has been a decrease, often significant, in the use of trials by state courts.
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