The State Supreme Court Data Project is constructing a database of decisions from the courts of last resort in all fifty U.S. states. It aims to cover approximately 21,000 decisions by over 400 justices from the 1995 through 1998 sessions, with data collection targeted for completion by late 2002. The project also includes biographical data on the justices and contextual variables about the courts.
Use Cases
- Modeling judicial voting behavior based on justice biographical data.
- Analyzing the impact of institutional court features on case outcomes.
- Studying temporal trends in state supreme court decisions from 1995 to 1998.
- Examining relationships between contextual variables and judicial politics.
Strengths
- Planned coverage of approximately 21,000 court decisions.
- Includes data from all fifty U.S. states.
- Designed to include biographical data for over 400 justices.
- The description mentions a documented coding scheme and reliability scores for data entry.
Limitations
- Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.
Provenance
- Source
- State Supreme Court Data Project
- Collection Method
- Coded from state supreme court decisions and published biographical sources using a Microsoft ACCESS template.
- Time Range
- 1995-1998
- Geography
- All fifty U.S. states