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462 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 9 (1982)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0462 and id is 1 raw text is: PREFACE
Of Fundamental Questions and the Veil of Detail
Past volumes of The Annals have included a number of issues dealing
with such matters as crowded court calendars and numerous aspects of the
criminal justice system. This volume takes a somewhat broader look. Parts
may at first blush appear to present relatively narrow or arcane matters of
judicial procedure or court organization. Each article, however, illumines
broader questions of the role and responsibilities of courts in American
government and society.
AMERICAN COURTS IN 1982: THE PRESSURE OF VOLUME AND
THE PRESSURE OF CHANGE
American courts have great visibility when they touch and are touched
by pressing and volatile controversies, such as racial tensions, the availabil-
ity of social services, or the regulation of our domestic institutions of birth,
marriage, and death. More than that, on a day-in-day-out basis, courts deal
relentlessly with the inevitable sources of friction that grow from and help
shape our societal existence: Which economic obligations will be enforced?
Who will be punished-and how-for committing acts of violence against
others? How will the agencies of government treat people?
The visibility of courts in 1982, however, derives also from three changes,
already in gestation a decade ago, that are by now clearly recognized as
major problems. Perhaps the most obvious difference between courts of
today and those of earlier decades is simply the difference in the volume of
cases brought to the courts-the crisis of volume, as Professor Daniel J.
Meador has phrased it.' The phenomenon is not simply that there are more
cases demanding attention, but that the demand is outstripping resources
by a greater margin than earlier.
A second difference is in the complexity of the subject matter brought to
courts. American courts-some more than others-are asked to decipher
factual records of a qualitatively different nature than judges struggled
with even 25 years ago. They are presented issues of production control
under environmental standards, asked to determine how the marketing of
interrelated computing equipment may have affected the economies of the
data processing industry, or presented subtle interpretations of inferential
statistics in efforts to prove covert bias in employment actions.
It is likely that every generation sees its world as more complex than that
with which earlier generations coped. And it is true that much of the work
1. Daniel J. Meador, Appellate Courts: Staff and Process in the Crisis of Volume (St. Paul,
MN: West, 1974).
NOTE: The points of view expressed in the Preface, as well as those reflected in the entire
volume, are those of the respective authors and are not intended to represent in any way the
official policy of the Federal Judicial Center. There has been no attempt to give adequate
treatment to all points of view on the various subjects treated, and the various articles are not
intended to reflect the views of the Special Editors.
9

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