SupremeCourtR Documentation

U.S. Supreme Court Vote Matrix

Description

This dataframe contains a matrix votes cast by U.S. Supreme Court justices in all cases in the 2000 term.

Usage

data(SupremeCourt)

Format

The dataframe has contains data for justices Rehnquist, Stevens, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg, and Breyer for the 2000 term of the U.S. Supreme Court. It contains data from 43 non-unanimous cases. The votes are coded liberal (1) and conservative (0) using the protocol of Spaeth (2003). The unit of analysis is the case citation (ANALU=0). We are concerned with formally decided cases issued with written opinions, after full oral argument and cases decided by an equally divided vote (DECTYPE=1,5,6,7).

Source

Harold J. Spaeth (2005). “Original United States Supreme Court Database: 1953-2004 Terms.” <URL:http://www.as.uky.edu/polisci/ulmerproject/sctdata.htm>.