Doctoral Dissertation Research: Measuring Legal Quality on the U.S. Supreme Court

博士论文研究：衡量美国最高法院的法律质量

• 批准号: 1728975
• 负责人: Ryan Black
• 金额: $ 3.1万
• 依托单位: Michigan State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-08-01 至 2019-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1728975&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Measuring; Legal

The U.S. Supreme Court decides cases by way of an adversarial system of justice. In particular, lawyers from opposing sides of each case write legal briefs that attempt to persuade the justices that their view of the law is the most correct. To make their case, lawyers base their legal arguments in existing court decisions, known as precedent. Because some precedent is more relevant and influential than others, there will be differences in the overall strength of the lawyer's arguments. Consequently, this project will generate an empirical measure of legal quality that identifies the strength (or weakness) of each side's legal arguments in a case. To generate this measure of legal quality, this project will draw extensively from the archival materials of retired Supreme Court justices. To do so, the project will examine bench memoranda, which are documents prepared by each justice's law clerks. The project will digitally photograph, content analyze, and make publicly available over 6,000 bench memoranda spanning nearly a dozen retired justices, from 1946-1994. These bench memoranda offer an evaluation of each side's legal arguments, based on the information provided in the legal briefs submitted by the parties, as well as that provided in the amicus curiae briefs, in each case. This project will use the information from the bench memoranda to evaluate and then create a measure of legal quality based on multiple aspects of legal doctrine. This resulting empirical measure, when combined with existing available data, will enable assessment of the impact of law on the Supreme Court's decision making process.

美国最高法院通过对抗制司法系统来裁决案件。特别是，每个案件的对立双方的律师都会撰写法律的摘要，试图说服法官他们对法律的看法是最正确的。为了证明他们的观点，律师们把他们的法律的论点建立在现有的法院判决的基础上，即所谓的先例。由于某些判例比其他判例更相关、更有影响力，因此律师的论点的整体力度会有所不同。因此，本项目将产生一个法律的质量的实证措施，确定在一个案件中的每一方的法律的论点的优势（或弱点）。为了产生这一衡量法律的质量的标准，该项目将广泛借鉴退休的最高法院法官的档案材料。为此，该项目将审查法官备忘录，这是每个法官的法律助理准备的文件。该项目将对1946年至1994年期间近12名退休法官的6,000多份法官备忘录进行数字化拍摄、内容分析和公开。这些法庭备忘录根据当事方提交的法律的案情摘要以及每个案件的法庭之友案情摘要中提供的信息，对每一方的法律的论点进行评估。这个项目将使用来自法官备忘录的信息来评估，然后根据法律的原则的多个方面来创建一个法律的质量的衡量标准。由此产生的经验措施，结合现有的数据，将能够评估法律对最高法院的决策过程的影响。