The Chief Supreme Court Justice: A Metaphysical Puzzle?

The Median Justice on the United States Supreme Court

Justice Blocks and Predictability of U.S. Supreme Court Votes

Successful attempts to predict judges' votes shed light into how legal decisions are made and, ultimately, into the behavior and evolution of the judiciary. Here, we investigate to what extent it is possible to make predictions of a justice's vote based on the other justices' votes in the same case. For our predictions, we use models and methods that have been developed to uncover hidden associ...

Former Supreme Court justice blasts minimum sentences for marijuana offenders.

Supreme Court

Th ere is no doubt that the U.S. Supreme Court has in-fl uenced the politics of the country. As a public body, the Court is a highly visible part of the federal government. Th is has always been so, even when the justices met briefl y twice a year in the drafty basement of the Capitol. Yet the idea that the Court itself is a political institution is controversial. Th e justices themselves have ...

Schooling the Supreme Court

Supreme Court Justices' uniform professional backgrounds have drawn increasing criticism. Yet it is unclear how diverse professional training would affect the Court's decisions. This Article offers the first empirical analysis of how Justices with diverse professional training vote: It examines a unique period when Justices with formal legal education sat with Justices who entered the professio...