Addressing Missingness in Serialized Bureaucratic Data: The Case of Chinese Courts

Abstract

Courts around the world are putting their data online, making information about case load, parties, and decisions available to the public. Yet, this data is far from complete, and often only reflects a portion of courts’ dockets. We offer and validate a set of tools for leveraging the serialized bureaucratic data from courts to evaluate missingness and court delay. Using data from more than 3,000 courts in China, our methods allow us to assess patterns of missingness in court data across geography and by type of case and to conduct the largest quantitative analysis to date on court delay in China. Our validation allows us to provide recommendations for researchers looking to augment incomplete bureaucratic data around the world.

Keywords: courts, law, missingness