No longer in its infancy, the proliferation of business courts and specialized commercial dockets as a means of efficiently handling complex business and commercial litigation has not abated in recent years. This article will highlight some of the recent developments in this arena both in the United States and in international jurisdictions, and is a summary of and introduction to the excellent work of nearly 20 authors in Chapter 4, "Business Courts," in the ABA Business and Corporate Litigation Committee's 2014 Edition of Recent Developments in Business and Corporate Litigation. A full history and description of the development of business courts and commercial dockets is beyond the scope of this article, but readers interested in that detailed background information will find the 2004 article by Mitchell L. Bach, Esq., and Lee Applebaum, Esq., in the Business Lawyer, to be the most authoritative dissection of the topic currently available. See Bach & Applebaum, A History of the Creation and Jurisdiction of Business Courts in the Last Decade, 60 Bus. Law. 147 (2004).

There currently are functioning business courts of some type either in cities, counties, regions, or statewide in several states, including the following: Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and West Virginia. The summary below focuses on recent developments in some of these jurisdictions, or jurisdictions considering the implementation of specialized business courts as well as developments in this arena internationally.

To read the full text by Richard L. Renck and Carmen H. Thomas, please visit the ABA website.