Empirically Assessing Judicial Activism

Over at Balkinization Stephen Griffin beat me to the task of (favorably) noting a recently-released book by Stefanie Lindquist and Frank Cross (both at Texas), Measuring Judicial Activism. Published by Oxford, info on the book is here. As Stephen notes, "When they (Lindquist and Cross) cumulate the scores of judicial activism across all dimensions, the top activist justices turn out to be Douglas, Black, and Warren, with Brennan and Marshall close behind. Justices Burger and Frankfurter rank last. The book is consistently interesting and well worth reading."

Comments

[frankcross]

Well, I hear this is an excellent book.

But it doesn't take a colloquial approach to activism. It identifies categories of activism (such as striking down federal statutes, state statutes, executive decisions, overruling precedent) and looks at each of the justices' votes.

It doesn't attempt to capture all possible forms of activism, because we strive for objectivity in measures but does try to capture the most common forms.

[tomdurk]

Does anyone know how they code the activism of Bush v Gore participants?