European Court of Justice Data

The following files contain information on European Court of Justice cases decided between 1959 and 1999. The information is coded in a series of Access 2007 database files. We have also posted a preliminary codebook. This version will be updated as the databases are updated. A number of comments need to be made with regards to the database files. Be sure to read this information before using the data. 1. Access files automatically save all changes made to them upon entry of new information/edits. As such, it is extremely important that anyone who downloads these files is very careful about editing. 2. These files continue to be revised and cleaned as we work with them. As such, we will be sure to indicate the date of posting. Please be sure to check back with our postings when working with the data to be sure that you are working with the most current version. We of course greatly appreciate being told if errors are found that we can verify and correct. Our goal is to have as clean a dataset as possible. 3. Working with Access may be unfamiliar to some, but it is a powerful and relatively easy way to assemble working datasets that can be imported into Stata or any other statistical program one wishes to employ. The database consists of a series of tables in which information is entered. These tables are linked through references based upon common variables. For example, the case number is entered into the general case characteristics table and that case number is the reference variable for the legal issues table. Access provides a powerful tool, the query function to build datasets consisting of data from the various tables. We recommend that you use this function for constructing datasets consisting of whatever subset of the data you wish. 4. While we have posted the full databases, we do not have equal confidence in all of the coded information. In the codebook we discuss in detail issues we encountered in collecting the information. One variable merits mention here. At this point, we do not have confidence in the issue area data we collected. The choice of terms from the ECJ case books, it turns out, is not based upon a well-defined coding scheme from the Court. We have correspondence from the Court to this effect. Until cross-validated, we would recommend not using this information at this point.

下述文件涵盖了1959年至1999年间判决的欧洲法院（European Court of Justice）案件相关信息。相关信息以一系列Access 2007数据库文件的形式进行编码存储。我们还发布了一份初步编码手册（codebook），该版本将随数据库的更新而同步更新。

关于本数据库文件，有若干注意事项需说明；在使用本数据集前，请务必阅读以下内容：
1. Access文件会在输入新信息或执行编辑操作时自动保存所有修改内容。因此，下载本数据库文件的用户务必谨慎进行编辑操作。
2. 本团队在使用这些文件的过程中，仍会持续对其进行修订与数据清洗。因此，我们会明确标注每份文件的发布日期。在使用数据集时，请务必回到我们的发布页面确认当前使用的为最新版本。若您发现可验证并修正的错误，敬请告知，我们不胜感激。本团队的目标是打造尽可能完善的干净数据集。
3. 部分用户可能对Access的操作不甚熟悉，但它是一款功能强大且操作相对简便的工具，可用于构建可导入至Stata或其他任意统计软件的可用数据集。本数据库由一系列存储信息的数据表组成，这些数据表通过基于公共变量的引用关系实现关联。例如，案件编号会录入至案件基本特征表中，而该案件编号同时可作为法律争议表的引用变量。Access提供了强大的查询功能，可用于整合来自多个数据表的数据以构建所需数据集，我们推荐您使用该功能生成任意所需的数据子集。
4. 尽管我们已发布完整数据库，但并非所有编码信息都经过了同等程度的验证。我们将在编码手册中详细讨论信息收集过程中遇到的各类问题。其中有一个变量需在此特别说明：截至目前，我们对所收集的案件议题领域数据尚无足够信心。经核实，从欧洲法院判例汇编中选取的术语并未遵循该法院制定的明确编码规范，我们已收到该法院出具的相关佐证函件。在完成交叉验证之前，我们建议暂时不要使用该部分数据。