People-First Court Data

Court-focused research is increasingly data driven, yet most available court data are organized around cases and institutions rather than the people who move through the legal system. As a result, existing quantitative measures provide a detailed picture of court activity from the courts’ perspective but reveal little about litigants’ cumulative experiences across cases and time. This article advances a people-first approach to court data that reorients the unit of analysis from cases to individuals, enabling new forms of empirical, legal, and policy analysis. The article surveys the current court data landscape, reviews methodological strategies for generating people-first measures from existing data sources, and examines how researchers and courts can address challenges related to privacy, deidentification, and data security. It argues that people-first court data can enhance transparency, support better-informed legal and policy decisions, and deepen understanding of how courts function for those who use them.