ITA Expansion, Time, and Costs

Chapter 4 initially provides data about the growth of ITA as well as offering a series of frames against which to understand its evolution, including a sociological perspective analyzing changes in ITA’s caseload against Professor Everett’s theory of diffusion of innovations. It next explores other elements of time, namely case length and deliberative delays, by offering descriptive data and testing whether case length has reliably increased over time or whether resolution times vary on the basis of institutions resolving disputes. It then turns to exploring temporal elements related to bifurcation and separate opinions. After providing an explanation of the fiscal costs data particularly related to parties’ legal costs as well as tribunal costs and expenses (and conducting a variety of tests to explore the potential impact of missing data), the last section identifies the reliable relationship between the costs of dispute resolution and the time required to resolve the dispute.