Collaborative Research: Fifty State Supreme Court Data Project

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The State Supreme Court Data Project, originally launched with a project development grant in 1996 and a project grant in 1997, rests upon the fundamental assumption that the lack of a single reliable and systematic data base that includes cross-sectional variation has impeded the development of comparative state judicial scholarship and, more generally, has rendered the development of a literature on comparative institutions virtually impossible. By May 2000, when this phase of the project ends, the principal investigators will have gathered at least two complete years of data (1995 and 1996) on the courts of last resort in all fifty American states. The project involves a coding scheme that includes 423 items on state supreme court decisions and creating a template that systematizes coding and allows direct data entry into computers. The research inclludes all 196 natural courts in 1995 and 1996, biographical data from all published sources for the 429 justices serving in 1995 and 1996, and over 12,000 cases in fifty states (as of February 14, 2000). Up-to-date information about the project can be found on the PI's website: (http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~pbrace/statecourt) When completed, the data base can be used by scholars from diverse perspectives to address the some of the most perplexing issues surrounding courts, leading, it is hoped, to more general, and more accurate, theories of the functioning of courts in American society.