NSF Grant to Support Empirical Research

Three law professors have received a National Science Foundation grant for $213,999 to support an empirical research project to collect and analyze data on federal court litigation brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) over a 10 year period.

The two-year grant was awarded to Professors Pauline T. Kim, Andrew D. Martin, and Margo Schlanger for their project titled, "The Litigation Process in Government-Initiated Employment Discrimination Suits." The research is a project of the law school’s Center for Empirical Research in the Law (CERL) in collaboration with the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse.

The project will contribute to understanding of institutional reform litigation and remedial design in employment discrimination disputes. For the first time, the data generated will permit systematic analysis of the EEOC’s enforcement activities and outcomes in the courts. The project will entail analysis of the contours of monetary and injunctive relief sought and obtained by the EEOC in court cases.  

In addition, data on the EEOC’s federal court litigation experience will be used to shed light on litigation dynamics and the interaction between litigant and judicial decision-making in a set of cases that constitute a significant fraction of the work of the federal district courts.

Documents relating to the EEOC’s enforcement activities, particularly those relating to injunctive relief, will be made publicly available through the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse, a web-based repository of documents and data relating to civil rights litigation of many types.