Supreme Court BlockPy Library

From the CORGIS Dataset Project

By Austin Cory Bart acbart@vt.edu, Joung Min Choi joungmin@vt.edu, Bo Guan jasonguan0107@vt.edu
Version 3.0.0, created 10/5/2021
Tags: us, usa, united states, government, law, legal, court, case, supreme, judge, barrister, lawyer, federal, national

Overview

The U.S. Supreme Court Database traces its history back about two decades ago, when Harold J. Spaeth asked the National Science Foundation to fund a database that would be so rich in content that multiple users - even those with vastly distinct projects and purposes in mind - could draw on it. Professor Spaeth's goal was at once refreshingly simple and extremely ambitious: to produce a database that would include and classify every single vote by a Supreme Court justice in all argued cases over a five-decade period. After securing the funding, Spaeth collected and coded the data, performed reliability checks, and eventually amassed the Database. In the late 1980s, he made it (and the documentation necessary to use it) publicly available.

Since then, Professor Spaeth has not only updated it each term; he has also continued to perform reliability analyses, thereby ensuring its integrity with each release, and added new variables. Today's version of the Database houses 247 pieces of information for each case, roughly broken down into six categories: (1) identification variables (e.g., citations and docket numbers); (2) background variables (e.g., how the Court took jurisdiction, origin and source of the case, the reason the Court agreed to decide it); (3) chronological variables (e.g., the date of decision, term of Court, natural court); (4) substantive variables (e.g., legal provisions, issues, direction of decision); (5) outcome variables (e.g., disposition of the case, winning party, formal alteration of precedent, declaration of unconstitutionality); and (6) voting and opinion variables (e.g., how the individual justices voted, their opinions and interagreements).

Case Centered data provides case level information; i.e., each row in the database corresponds to a dispute. These data do not contain specific justice vote information.

A tremendously helpful resource for learning more about the dataset is the codebook: http://supremecourtdatabase.org/documentation.php?s=1.

http://supremecourtdatabase.org/data.php

Key Descriptions

Key	List of...	Comment	Example Value
3_judge_dc	Boolean	whether the case was heard by a three-judge federal district court (occasionally called ��as specially constituted district court��)	True
docket	Integer	the docket number that the Supreme Court has assigned to the case	24
name	String	the name of the case	"HALLIBURTON OIL WELL CEMENTING CO. v. WALKER et al., DOING BUSINESS AS DEPTHOGRAPH CO."
citation.led	String	the citation to each case from the United States Reports(LEd)	"91 L. Ed. 3"
citation.lexis	String	the citation to each case from the LEXIS cite	"1946 U.S. LEXIS 1724"
citation.sct	String	the citation to each case from the Supreme Court Reporter (S.CT)	"67 S. Ct. 6"
citation.us	String	the citation to each case from the official United States Reports (US)	"329 U.S. 1"
decision.authority	String	the bases on which the Supreme Court rested its decision with regard to each legal provision that the Court considered in the case	"4.0"
decision.direction	String	the ideological "direction" of the decision to determine whether the Court supports or opposes the issue to which the case pertains	"liberal"
decision.dissent agrees	Boolean	whether the dissenting opinion and the majority in a case both support (1) or, conversely, oppose (0) the issue to which the case pertains	True
decision.jurisdiction	String	a variety of means whereby the Court undertakes to consider cases that it has been petitioned to review	"rehearing or restored to calendar for reargument"
decision.precedent altered?	Boolean	whether the majority opinion effectively says that the decision in this case "overruled" one or more of the Court's own precedents	True
decision.term	Integer	the term in which the Court handed down its decision	1946
decision.type	String	the decision type the Court made for the case	"opinion of the court (orally argued)"
decision.unconstitutional	String	whether the Court either declared unconstitutional an act of Congress; a state or territorial statute, regulation, or constitutional provision; or a municipal or other local ordinance	"no declaration of unconstitutionality"
decision.winning party	String	whether the petitioning party (i.e., the plaintiff or the appellant) emerged victorious	"petitioning party received a favorable disposition"
id.case	String	the first of four unique internal identification numbers	"1946-001"
id.case issues	String	the third of four unique internal identification numbers	"1946-001-01-01"
id.docket	String	the second of four unique internal identification numbers	"1946-001-01"
id.vote	String	the fourth of four unique internal identification numbers	"1946-001-01-01-01"
issue.area	String	This variable simply separates the issues identified in the preceding variable (issue) into the larger categories	"Economic Activity"
issue.id	Integer	issue id	80180
issue.text	String	the issue for each decision	"patents and copyrights: patent"
laws.id	Integer	id for the law type	6
laws.type	String	the constitutional provision(s), statute(s), or court rule(s) that the Court considered in the case	"Infrequently litigated statutes"
lower court.direction	String	whether the decision of the court whose decision the Supreme Court reviewed was itself liberal or conservative as these terms are defined in the direction of decision variable	"conservative"
lower court.disagreement?	Boolean	the Supreme Court's majority opinion mentioned that one or more of the members of the court whose decision the Supreme Court reviewed dissented	True
lower court.disposition	String	the treatment the court whose decision the Supreme Court reviewed accorded the decision of the court it reviewed	"affirmed"
lower court.reasons	String	the reason, if any, that the Court gives for granting the petition for certiorari	"to resolve question presented"
natural court.chief	String	the chief justice during whose tenure the case was decided	"Vinson"
natural court.id	Integer	natural court id	1301
natural court.period	Integer	a period during which no personnel change occurs	1
origin.id	Integer	origin id	51
origin.name	String	the court in which the case originated, not the administrative agency	"California Southern U.S. District Court"
source.id	Integer	source id	29
source.name	String	the court whose decision the Supreme Court reviewed	"U.S. Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit"
voting.majority	Integer	the frequency with which given justices vote with the majority	8
voting.minority	Integer	the number of votes in dissent	1
voting.split on second	Boolean	whether the vote variables (e.g., majVotes, minVotes) pertain to the vote on the second issue	True
voting.unclear	Boolean	whether the vote was not clearly specified	True
arguments.petitioner.entity	String	the party who petitioned the Supreme Court to review the case	"oil company / or natural gas producer"
arguments.petitioner.id	Integer	petitioner id	198
arguments.respondent.entity	String	the party being sued or tried and is also known as the appellee	"inventor / patent assigner / trademark owner or holder"
arguments.respondent.id	Integer	respondent id	172
decision.admin action.agency	String	administrative agency activity occurring prior to the onset of litigation	"Unidentifiable "
decision.admin action.id	Integer	id for the administrative agency activity occurring prior to the onset of litigation	118
decision.case.disposition	String	the treatment the Supreme Court accorded the court whose decision it reviewed	"reversed"
decision.case.unusual	Boolean	whether the Court made an unusual disposition of the cited case which does not match the coding scheme of the preceding variable	True
decision.date.day	Integer	the day that the Court announced its decision in the case	18
decision.date.full	String	the year, month, and day that the Court announced its decision in the case	"11/18/1946"
decision.date.month	Integer	the month that the Court announced its decision in the case	11
decision.date.year	Integer	the year that the Court announced its decision in the case	1946
voting.majority assigner.id	Integer	id for the majority opinion assigner	78
voting.majority assigner.name	String	the assigner of the opinion or judgment of the Court	"HLBlack"
voting.majority writer.id	Integer	id for the majority opinion writer	78
voting.majority writer.name	String	the author of the Court's opinion or judgment,	"HLBlack"