This article explores the way that a set of cases arising from a specific event, product, or claim form a congregation of cases that displays common features and that traces a discernable career over time buch a career is related to, but not uniquely determined by, the course of the social activity that underlies the type of case. The relation of activity and case congregation is mediated by a complex structure of disputing activity (including norms, cognitive dispositions, institutions of access, stakes and resources, social support, legal services, and more). In addition to these extemal influences, such Utigation Itself influences its future course by various effects on the underlymg activity, on the organization of disputing about it. and on the legal settmg. Such endogenous effects include holisHc effects associated with the size and distribution of the congregation and career effects associated with the way that the congregation unfolds over time. Delineation of these various effects suggests that litigation lives "a Me of Its own, partly independent of underlying events in the outside world, but that the regularities in the litigation process are not reducible to a comprehensive pattem since the activity is interactive and strategic.
