Law Practice,
Civil Litigation
Sep. 17, 2018
The downsizing of the American civil trial
Barrels of ink have been spilled investigating, eulogizing and variously mourning or lauding the "vanishing trial." But this is far from the whole story. A different, though related, phenomenon is also at play: not the disappearance of the civil trial, but rather, its downsizing.
Nora Freeman Engstrom
Professor
Stanford Law School
Email: nora.engstrom@law.stanford.edu
Nora writes and teaches about the civil justice system.
Civil trials, many have noted, are going the way of the dodo bird. In 1938, trials resolved roughly 20 percent of civil cases in federal court. By1990, only 4.3 percent of federal civil filings reached trial. By 2000, a mere 2.2 percent did. And, more recently, in 2016, the civil trial rate was halved again. Federal courts conducted half as many civil trials in 2016 than they did in 1962, even while disposing of over five times as many civil cases.
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