A structured database of U.S. Supreme Court cases and opinions from the Warren and Burger courts through 1993, created by James L. Gibson. It records case attributes, litigants, amicus curiae briefs, and the content of judicial opinions, which are coded by type, topic, and underlying values. The data is organized into three integrated parts covering case details, amicus brief filers, and litigant groups.
Use Cases
- Analyzing trends in Supreme Court decision direction based on the direction of decision variable.
- Studying the influence of amicus curiae briefs based on filer and co-filer information.
- Modeling the relationship between case background variables and case outcomes.
- Investigating patterns in individual justices' voting behavior based on voting and opinion variables.
Strengths
- Covers a defined 40-year period spanning multiple chief justiceships.
- Codes opinions based on literal content into eight types, topics, and values.
- Integrates three distinct data parts (case database, briefs, groups) that can be linked.
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
- James L. Gibson
- Collection Method
- Data collection and coding of Supreme Court case opinions and attributes.
- Time Range
- 1953-1993
- Geography
- United States