Background

 

The CSP’s first attempt at compiling comparable national court caseload statistics was in 1975.  At that time, it was evident that there were profound differences in how states defined and reported their caseload data.  It was clear that, without common caseload definitions and a standard format for classifying and reporting data, the goal of the CSP could never be achieved.  The need for a statistical dictionary was finally met when the first edition was published at the end of 1980.

 

This Guide builds on the previous editions of the Dictionary.  However, the Guide is more than an updated and refined version of the last edition published in 1989.  It is qualitatively different because of developments in the law, the influx of new and previously undefined cases (e.g., domestic violence), enhancements in technology, and the growing professionalism of court managers during the past 15 years.  The reader will find many improvements in the current Guide that are intended to keep pace with the changing world of court management.

 

The most visible change over its predecessor is that the Guide is no longer a dictionary as such.  The Guide has been redesigned to provide a comprehensive set of model reporting matrices, rather than an alphabetized list of terms.  The new focus is on clearly differentiating and defining the primary components of data classification reporting.  Hence, only terms from the matrices are defined, and they appear on the matrices themselves.  The reasons for this are twofold.  First, widely available law dictionaries already define many of the terms that appeared in earlier editions.  Second, limiting the definitions to the terms used in the matrices provided a logical point to curtail the definition process.