The focus of this variable is the court in which the case originated, not the administrative agency (see adminAction and adminActionState). For this reason a number of cases show a state or federal appellate court as the one in which the case originated rather than a court of first instance (trial court). This variable has no entry for cases that originated in the United States Supreme Court. Note too that caseOrigin does not identify the name of the state if the case originated in a state court. For the state name, see variable caseOriginState.

The courts in the District of Columbia present a special case in part because of their complex history. (The Federal Judicial Center’s website provides a succinct description, at: http://www.fjc.gov/history/home.nsf/page/courts_special_dc.html). Below there is a separate code for the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, which at times had the powers of a circuit court and at others was a trial court. The current federal courts, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (previously known as the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia) and the District Court for the District of Columbia) and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (a successor to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia) also, of course, have their own separate codes. Local trial (including today’s superior court) and appellate courts (including today’s District of Columbia Court of Appeals, the highest court in the District of Columbia) are treated as state courts here and as District of Columbia under the caseOriginState variable.

Other general coding notes:

• Cases that arise on a petition of habeas corpus and those removed to the federal courts from a state court are defined as originating in the federal, rather than a state, court system.
• This variable has no entry if the case arose under the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction and in other proceedings with which no other court was involved.
• A petition for a writ of habeas corpus begins in the federal district court, not the state trial court.
• Cases removed to a federal court originate there.

  Coding notes with special relevance to the legacy database:

• The originating (caseOrigin) and source (caseSource) court is often the same because many cases went from trial directly to the Supreme Court. For these cases, lcDisposition (how the source court treated the originating court’s decision) will be empty. An exception is the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, which had a trial and general session. See, e.g., Thaw v. Ritchie, 136 U.S. 519 (1890), in which the court in general term reversed the trial court.
• We identify courts based on the naming conventions of the day. In the legacy data, users will see that many source and origin courts are “United States Circuit Court for the ___ District of ___.” Because of the plethora of districts (and changes in districts), we do not, however, differentiate among districts in a state. E.g., New York U.S. Circuit for (all) District(s) of New York includes all the districts in New York. For concise histories of the circuit and district courts, see the Federal Judicial Center’s website at: http://www.fjc.gov/history/home.nsf/page/index.html.

Also see source of case (caseSource).