Which Courts Decide The Most Judicial Assistance Cases?


The U.S. judicial assistance decisions are not evenly distributed throughout the country. I thought it would be interesting to see which courts have decided the most cases within the Letters Blogatory scope of coverage.

There are some caveats, cautions, and provisos. We have only about five months of decisions. My Westlaw query may have missed some cases. And I’m only covering cases where the courts decide an issue relating to judicial assistance. There are no doubt lots of cases where the parties use the Hague Service Convention, or the Hague Evidence Convention, etc., without any disputes that lead to a court decision.

But with those provisos in mind, there are a handful of courts that decide more of these cases than most others. The winner—a bit of a surprise to me—is the Southern District of Florida. The District of Columbia comes in a close second, followed by the Southern District of New York and my home court, the District of Massachusetts.

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I am working on integrating this chart into the blog as a permanent feature, so stay tuned!


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