Paul Collins, Jr. (Univ. N. Texas--Poli Sci) notes the public availability of the U.S. Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings Database that he and co-author Lori Ringhand used in their recent book, Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings and
Constitutional Change (Cambridge Press, 2013).
"This database provides a wealth of information regarding the confirmation hearings of U.S. Supreme Court nominees held before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Based on confirmation hearing dialogue, the dataset includes information on the political environment surrounding the nomination, the issue and subissue areas being discussed, and the manner in which the nominees answer senators' questions. In addition, the database contains information on the discussion of judicial decisions at the hearings, including the name of the decisions and the courts that rendered the cases debated at the hearings."
Those who
visit the site (here) will note that it includes a growing
compilation of data sets--most germane to federal court judicial decisionmaking--linked
to selected publications that exploit the data. Also, relevant Stata do files accompany many of the data sets. Not only does this site help disseminate useful data, but it also facilitates replication efforts.
Two final notes. First, when JELS editors (myself included) or JELS referees request data and do files from authors incident to manuscript reviews, Paul's web site includes examples of "best practices" that should be widely emulated. Second, graduate and law students seeking to learn empirical methods will find these "ready-to-use" data sets invaluable.
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