A recent thread on a listserv prompts this reminder about the availability of a leading Supreme Court database that traces its roots back to Prof. Harold Spaeth's pioneering efforts from a few decades ago.
“The Supreme Court Database is the definitive source for researchers, students, journalists, and citizens interested in the U.S. Supreme Court. The Database contains over two hundred pieces of information about each case decided by the Court between the 1946 and 2013 terms. Examples include the identity of the court whose decision the Supreme Court reviewed, the parties to the suit, the legal provisions considered in the case, and the votes of the Justices.”
The database includes "both Case Centered and Justice Centered data. In the Case Centered data the unit of analysis is the case; i.e., each row of the dataset contains information about an individual dispute. These data should be used unless the votes of the individual justices are of interest. The Justice Centered data include a row for each justice participating in each dispute."
An online codebook (here) and a brief history of the database (here) by Harold Spaeth accompany the database.
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