Empirical Legal Studies

Data Sharing Norms & Variation Across Fields

Jeff Yates (SUNY Binghamton--Poli Sci) ignited an important discussion (here) about data sharing norms and possible variations across fields. Jeff notes:

"In political science there are very strong professional mores to share data with other researchers. In fact, it is usually expected immediately after publication of your first article using the data if not before that time (e.g. after presenting a working paper at a conference). I profess some ignorance of the social mores on data sharing in empirical legal studies, but from my few conversations on this point, I think that they might be somewhat different."

Setting aside scholarly norms (or, better yet, aspirations), Jeff also wonders whether IP doctrine tugs norms for empirical legal scholars.

Greater Access to More Municipal Data Sets

Maya Sen, over at the Social Science Statistics Blog, posts about (with links) a wonderful emerging trend involving increased access to municipal-level data.

Data Preservation

Setting aside the politics surrounding the global warming debate, Eugene Volokh's discussion (here) about discarded raw data takes up an issue important to every empiricist--data preservation.

Supreme Court Database Website

Good news -- the new NSF-funded Supreme Court Database Website is now up and running, and I can't imagine this won't make the database available to thousands more users via its easy-to-use interface.  Not only can you download the most current version of the database and its companions, but you can also perform analyses right on the website.  This is good stuff; check it out! 

http://supremecourtdatabase.org 

Bias in Spaeth Data?

With a hat tip to the Monkey Cage, I thought folks might be interested in taking a look at this paper.  I know my fellow editor Carolyn has done some research on the Spaeth data as well -- perhaps she'll weigh in on this research?  (FYI, I have not yet read the Harvey/Woodruff paper.)

Updated Judicial Common Space Scores

here. Courtesy of Profs. Lee Epstein, Andrew Martin, Jeff Segal, and Chad Westerland. JCS attempt to provide preference estimates for Supreme Court justices that are directly comparable to preference measures of Courts of Appeals judges, members of Congress, and the President. Our data extend through 2008 and correspond with the most recent version of Keith Poole's Common Space scores.

Hello!

Thanks to the Empirical Legal Studies crew for letting me guest blog here. Consistent with the motto of the blog, I hope to use my time with ELS to bring some method to the madness that seems likely to swirl around Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings this summer.

 

For the past two years I have been compiling a dataset capturing all of the statements made by senators and Supreme Court nominees at the confirmation hearings held by the Senate Judiciary Committee.  The dataset starts with the Felix Frankfurter’s hearing and ends with Justice Alito’s. I have coded by issue area all statements made by the nominees and senators. Each unit of analysis includes information about the political party of the questioning senator, the appointing president, and the committee chair. The dataset also captures instances where a court case was discussed by name, and includes variables indicating whether the statement being coded addressed constitutional interpretation, statutory interpretation, or federalism.

 

I hope to use this data to provide real-time commentary on the confirmation hearings this summer.  Because Supreme Court vacancies occur so infrequently, our discussion of the confirmation process often lacks historical perspective. I hope this data can help rectify that, by bringing concrete information to conversations about what has – and has not – been “the norm” in this process. 

 

I also hope that the ELS community will provide feedback about how to use and improve this dataset. This is in many ways a ‘test run’ of the data, so I look forward to hearing your comments about it. I’m also open to suggestions regarding what type of information you think would be interesting to pull out of the dataset.

 

First up: What makes a confirmation contentious?

The Dataverse

I just finished posting some data and documentation on the Dataverse Network.  This is a wonderful -- and remarkably easy to use -- resource that provides scholars with a virtual archive for their data.  It allows you to make your data publicly available in a permanent format with a stable URL -- useful if, for example, you change institutions.  You can even incorporate links to your data into your own website, branding the material as your own, without having to worry about hosting and maintaining it.   If other scholars use or rely on your data, there is a formal citation that they can use, giving you appropriate scholarly credit.

And of course the Dataverse is a great resource for scholars who might want to replicate other people's work or rely on their data.   Thanks to Harvard's Institute for Quantitative Social Science for creating and making available this resource.  You can read more about it here, in a post by Gary King at the Social Science Statistics Blog.

Judicial Pay Debate Data

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy Eric Posner brings logitudinal data to the judicial pay debate. The data come from a paper on the same topic, Are Judges Overpaid?: A Skeptical Response to the Judicial Salary Debate, by Stephen Choi (NYU), Mitu Gulati (Duke), and Eric Posner (Chicago).

Effect of "High Score" Rule on Volume of LSAT Repeaters

A couple of years ago, Paul Caron flagged an obscure ABA rule change that required law schools to report the highest LSAT score of an admitted student versus the prior practice of averaging.  Paul and Moneylaw blogger Tom Bell foresaw a likely surge in the number of repeat test-takers--but without any appreciable benefit.  Repeat score are, in fact, less accurate in predicting law school grades -- though, let's not kid ourselves, law schools are not looking at the LSAT anymore for predicting 1L performance.  It also costs a lot of time and money.  And if upper class white kids are better able to afford test preparation courses, it is likely to exacerbate the racial performance gap. 

Well, the data is in for the October 2008 cycle.  It is indisputable that applicants are figuring out the implications of a low LSAT score in the US rankings era (fewer admissions letters, few scholarship dollars) and the potential upside/no downside of taking the exam again. Despite a -1.7% drop in first-time takers, the repeater volume is up 16.8%.  In the Northeast, where the positional competition is the most intense, there has been a staggering 33.7% increase. 

From an individual perspective, I know it makes sense to take the test a second or third time. Indeed, it is comforting to many to have that option.  But in the aggregate, this policy really just opens the door for a protracted zero sum game.  If law schools were making better decisions because of the second or third scores, the additional time and expense could be justified.  The second scores, however, are less reliable than the first and second combined. 

Understanding these dynamics, the regulator (the ABA Section on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar) is supposed to set rules that are in the best interests of the students and the profession -- not law schools or testing agencies. Sam Stonefield of Western New England Law wrote a very detailed objection to this policy. He was prescient.  I appreciate the time he took to spell it all out.