Document Type
Article
Publication Date
9-2025
Publisher
Wiley
Source Publication
Law & Society Review
Source ISSN
1540-5893
Original Item ID
DOI: 10.1017/lsr.2025.30
Abstract
Though the use of court documents as data is widespread within US sociolegal scholarship, their use remains surprisingly undertheorized as a methodological practice. This article, therefore, asks, what differentiates court materials from other forms of documentary data, and how do these attributes impact claimsmaking in law and society scholarship? Drawing on varied empirical examples from existing scholarship, we uncover five distinctive attributes: their multitemporality, their dialogic nature, the multiple truths they house, their multivocality, and their social productivity. Considering these attributes, we argue that court documents unite our diverse field of scholarship in two important ways. First, as an essential output of the legal system, they are arguably “our” data, shaping law and society as we know it today. Second, they both reify and obscure the power dynamics that make social inequality so durable, helping inequality appear “just.” Despite their underexploited promise for theory-building in sociolegal research, we also discuss the practical, epistemic, and ethical pitfalls to their use. Ultimately, ignoring these rich yet complex documents is to our field’s analytic peril.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Degenshein, Anya and Leslie, Camilo Arturo, "Using Court Documents as Data: Opportunities and Challenges for Sociolegal Scholarship" (2025). Social and Cultural Sciences Faculty Research and Publications. 377.
https://epublications.marquette.edu/socs_fac/377
Comments
Accepted version. Law & Society Review, Vol. 59, No. 3 (September 2025): 619-647. DOI. © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Law and Society Association.
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.