These transparency-promoting efforts have spurred heated debate.  Proponents point to public health and safety benefits and to “open courts” as a cornerstone of American law.  Opponents counter that dispute resolution outside the public eye serves equally cherished American ideals of privacy, individual autonomy, and efficient settlement of differences.  On the latter, a recent effort to extend California’s STAND Act to much of tort law—which the Rhode Center supported—went down to defeat amidst opponents’ claims that transparency would unleash a cascade of negative effects, including an uptick in adversarialism, higher litigation costs, and fewer settlements.

These debates have suffered from a severe lack of empirical evidence. Basic questions go unanswered: Does limiting non-disclosure agreements increase litigation? How common are stipulated protective orders? What effect does limiting secrecy and increasing transparency in litigation actually have?

The Rhode Center’s Transparency in Litigation project is answering these questions using first-of-its-kind rigorous empirical research on vast amounts of data from both state and federal courts. As with all of our work, we seek to bring evidence and discipline to legal and policy debates, further informed decision making by key stakeholders, and advance understanding and scholarship on these complex issues.