Updating and Backdating the U.S. Supreme Court Judicial Database

二十年来，几乎所有对当代最高法院及其成员的系统分析都依赖于哈罗德·j·斯佩斯的美国最高法院司法数据库。这适用于社会科学家进行的研究，也越来越多地适用于法律学者；它适用于定量和定性研究，以及那些本质上更具描述性的研究。事实上，几份同行评议期刊的清单显示，这篇关于最高法院的文章很少从其他来源获得数据。顶级出版社出版的专著也经常依赖于数据库，近年来受到公众关注的许多关于法院的数字研究也充分利用了数据库中的数据。出于同样的原因，试图阐明法院工作各方面的记者现在经常使用它。简而言之，Spaeth的产品不仅帮助填补了我们的知识空白。它是法律和社会科学世界中罕见的生物之一：一项实质性地推进了一大片研究领域的发明。然而，无论数据库多么宝贵，它现在开始显示出它的年龄。沿着这些思路，我们看到了几组问题，但最直接的是一个简单的事实，即对许多学者和他们的学生来说，更不用说政策制定者和记者了，数据库很难使用。这不是斯佩斯的错。当他创建微软时，桌面计算革命刚刚起步；互联网还不存在。尽管Spaeth没有忽视这些发展，但他的数据库仍然反映了微计算和互联网之前的起源，任何用户都可以证明这一点。然而，许多学者、政策制定者和记者都没有接受过使用当前数据库所需的统计程序方面的培训，这意味着许多有价值的研究可能会受到不必要的阻碍。此外，甚至对必备软件的了解也是不够的。为了进行简单的分析，用户也必须了解各种识别变量。现代技术使得学习晦涩的变量名和值变得不必要；它还使那些几乎不需要学习统计软件包的人能够远离这些软件包。我们建议将这种现代技术附加到speth数据库中。用户可以很容易地访问所有变量（具有描述性名称），并快速选择他们想要探索的案例集——无论是单个决定，还是所有口头辩论并产生签名意见的第一修正案争议。使用这个新设计的界面可以很容易地构建图形和表格，并且可以直观地进行从最基本到更复杂的分析。用户将能够在站点上创建帐户，以保存案例选择和他们执行的分析。如果他们愿意，下载整个数据库或各种形式的子集（SPSS, Stata, Excel）也不需要特殊技能。最后，在新的界面的帮助下，最近在开放的互联网资源中提供全文最高法院意见方面的变化将使更广泛的用户能够参与一种混合研究方法，这将给数据库带来更大的力量。研究人员将能够使用数据库来识别、排序和评估与他们感兴趣的相关变量相对应的病例子组。但是，一旦这个子集被组装起来，该界面将提供从他们的数据集到最高法院意见全文的直接链接，这些全文可以在互联网上的其他地方免费获得。目前的数据库没有这种能力，但它将允许社会科学家、法学教授和法律历史学家以系统的严谨方式识别相关案例，然后在特定项目中对意见本身进行更细致的分析。

For two decades now, virtually all systematic analysis of the contemporary Supreme Court and its members has relied on Harold J. Spaeth's U.S. Supreme Court Judicial Database. This holds for research conducted by social scientists and, increasingly, by legal academics; and it holds for quantitative and qualitative studies, as well as those more descriptive in nature. In fact, several inventories of peer-reviewed journals show that it is the rare article on the Court that derives its data from an alternative source. Monographs published by top presses also regularly rely on Database, and the many numerical studies of the Court receiving public attention in recent years have made liberal use of the data it houses. By the same token, journalists seeking to illuminate dimensions of the Court's work now regularly deploy it.Spaeth's product, in short, has not just helped fill gaps in our knowledge. It is one of those rare creatures in the law and social science world: an invention that has substantially advanced a large area of study.And yet, however invaluable the Database, it is now starting to show its age. Along these lines, we see several sets of issues but none more immediate than the simple fact that for many scholars and their students-not to mention policy makers and journalists-the Database is difficult to use. This is no fault of Spaeth's. When he created it, the desktop computing revolution had barely taken hold; the Internet did not exist. While Spaeth has not ignored these developments, his Database nonetheless continues to reflect its pre-micro-computing, pre-Internet origins, as any user can attest. Yet many scholars, policy makers, and journalists are not trained in the statistical programs necessary to use the current database, meaning that much worthwhile research may be thwarted unnecessarily. Moreover, even knowledge of the requisite software is insufficient. To conduct even simple analyses, users must understand the various identication variables as well.Modern technology makes learning arcane variable names and values unnecessary; it also enables movement away from statistical software packages for those with little need to learn them.It is this modern technology that we propose to attach to the Spaeth Database. Users will have easy access to all variables (with descriptive names) and quickly be able select the set of cases they desire to explore-whether a single decision or, say, all First Amendment disputes that were orally argued and resulted in a signed opinion. Graphs and tables will be straightforward to construct using this newly designed interface, and analyses-from the very basic to the more complex-intuitive to conduct. Users will be able to create accounts on the site to save case selections and the analyses they perform. Should they desire, downloading the entire database or subsets in various forms (SPSS, Stata, Excel) will also require no special skills.Finally, recent changes in the availability of full-text Supreme Court opinions in open Internet sources will, with the help of the new interface, enable a broader set of users to engage in a hybrid method of research that will lend even greater power to the Database. Researchers will be able to use the Database to identify, sort, and assess a subgroup of cases corresponding to their relevant variable(s) of interest. But once that subset is assembled, the interface will provide direct links from their dataset to the full text Supreme Court opinions, which are freely available elsewhere on the Internet. This capability, unavailable with the current Database, will permit social scientists, law professors, and legal historians to identify relevant cases with systematic rigor, but then for particular projects to perform more nuanced analysis of the opinions themselves.