Visitors to the National Center for State Courts’ State Court Structures dashboards will now find content improvements and design enhancements to make accessing data about court structures easier.
Judges, court administrators, policy makers, researchers, and others can now easily access individual structures while also comparing states. Combining data visualization techniques from both Tableau and ArcGIS, these dashboards provide a user-friendly way to explore complex information about state court systems.
“Our dashboards are among the most requested resources we offer,” said Miriam Hamilton, an NCSC senior court research analyst and project lead. “These improvements help the court community by providing a tool to quickly compare or look up state-specific information about court types, case type jurisdiction, and routes of appeal. We re-designed the dashboard to allow updates as needed and to answer questions from various angles.”
Hamilton said the dashboards can help users answer questions such as:
• Which case categories does the general jurisdiction trial court in state X handle?
• Which states with a similar case volume and rural population to mine have limited jurisdiction courts that hear case type X?
• Which states have “district courts” classified as courts of general jurisdiction rather than limited jurisdiction?
A significant enhancement to the dashboards is the updated heatmap functionality and selection options, along with the ability to filter states and courts by case type jurisdiction, offering a more effective and visually intuitive way to compare data for informed decision-making.
The interactive dashboards offer a comprehensive look at state court systems, enabling users to:
• Compare court structures based on factors such as population size and density, rurality, caseload size, and the presence of the death penalty.
• Analyze case type jurisdictions and pathways for appeals, based on standardized data of complex details to enable comparisons.
• Learn about the varying names of courts across states and their unique structures.
• Download a PDF version of each state’s court structure for easy reference.
To explore the updated State Court Structures dashboards and gain insights into the organization of state courts across the country, visit www.courtstatistics.org/state-courts/state-court-structures.
Judges, court administrators, policy makers, researchers, and others can now easily access individual structures while also comparing states. Combining data visualization techniques from both Tableau and ArcGIS, these dashboards provide a user-friendly way to explore complex information about state court systems.
“Our dashboards are among the most requested resources we offer,” said Miriam Hamilton, an NCSC senior court research analyst and project lead. “These improvements help the court community by providing a tool to quickly compare or look up state-specific information about court types, case type jurisdiction, and routes of appeal. We re-designed the dashboard to allow updates as needed and to answer questions from various angles.”
Hamilton said the dashboards can help users answer questions such as:
• Which case categories does the general jurisdiction trial court in state X handle?
• Which states with a similar case volume and rural population to mine have limited jurisdiction courts that hear case type X?
• Which states have “district courts” classified as courts of general jurisdiction rather than limited jurisdiction?
A significant enhancement to the dashboards is the updated heatmap functionality and selection options, along with the ability to filter states and courts by case type jurisdiction, offering a more effective and visually intuitive way to compare data for informed decision-making.
The interactive dashboards offer a comprehensive look at state court systems, enabling users to:
• Compare court structures based on factors such as population size and density, rurality, caseload size, and the presence of the death penalty.
• Analyze case type jurisdictions and pathways for appeals, based on standardized data of complex details to enable comparisons.
• Learn about the varying names of courts across states and their unique structures.
• Download a PDF version of each state’s court structure for easy reference.
To explore the updated State Court Structures dashboards and gain insights into the organization of state courts across the country, visit www.courtstatistics.org/state-courts/state-court-structures.
