The Court of Claims Lab is Directed by Dr. Logan Strother, Associate Professor of Political Science. 

The United States Court of (Federal) Claims is a little-studied but crucially important federal court. Its primary duty is to resolve money and contract claims made against the national government. In doing so, however, it plays an important role in implementing federal policy; for this reason, it is a frequent site of litigation against government policies.

We are building a database of every case the Court of Claims has

decided in its 170-plus-year history.

People sue the government in the Court of Federal Claims for a huge variety of reasons, including enforcement of Indigenous peoples’ rights under treaties, reparations for wrongful criminal convictions, natural disaster mitigation actions, management of water rights, enforcement of intellectual property rights (e.g., patent and copyright), and much more.

Despite its importance, the work of the Court of Claims has not received the attention it deserves from scholars. The Court of Claims Lab is working to fix that. Once complete, the Court of Claims Database will be hosted here and publicly available for all to use. You can find papers coming out of this project in the “Research” tab on this site.