Courts as conflict resolvers : a comparative study of conflict resolving activities in district courts

Within the framework of the traditional sociological question, how the legal system is related to the society, the aim of this study is to treat the legal system as a conflict resolver. More specifically, the following questions will be treated:1.Which categories of people and which categories of organizations are as parties using the court for settling conflicts and in what types of conflicts do they act in this way?2.Howdoes the legal utilization vary over time? May socio-economical, demographical, and legal conditions explain these variations?This study only deals with conflict resolution in courts of first instance, so called district courts.One aim has been to get a general view over to what extent Swedish courts are utilized as conflict resolvers, and how this utilization varies over time. The discussion is mainly based upon official statistics. To complete this discussion, an empirical study has been realized. This study is comparative. The conflict solving activities between 1940 and 1969 has been examined in the town courts of Umeå and Luleå. The data basis consists of official statistics and collected informations from cases finally dealt with in the two courts. A stratified random sample out of these cases has been made. As a result of theoretical and methodological considerations the sample consists of only certain types of disputes and crimes.As a general conclusion, one can state that disputes before the courts nowadays as earlier are concerning socially and economically strong persons. However one must notify that this study is just a case study with its limitations.Concerning criminal cases, expected results from the study are that the proportion of workers among the prosecuted is bigger than the proportion of prosecuted business leaders. Interesting however, is that the unskilled are well represented in the data material. This means a different picture compared to the distribution of plaintiffs in civil cases. The changes in character of the conflict constellations occured in the two towns at the same time as summary legal processes were introduced in criminal cases at the end of the 1940's. A bigger proportion of workers as prosecuted party is observed after that processual simplification. Pro-cessual simplifications of that kind seem to strengthen rather than to weaken the occupational bias among the prosecuted persons, at least in crime cases with an injured person involved.Concerning criminal cases, we have finally assumpted that during phases of social and economical stagnation both the number of prosecuted workers and the number of theft and drunkeness cases increases in the type of industrialized community that Luleå belongs to. In more socially and economically differentiated communities, like Umeå, the same type of development is more linked to phases of economical expansion. While increases in the pressure of temptation are widening the economical conditions for people, this may be the reasonable explanation to the variations in the conflict resolving activities in the courts between different local communities. Explanations, close to those used to explain criminal activity caused by poverty, may refer to local communities dominated by industry.digitalisering@um