UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The U.S. Supreme Court Database, one of the foremost research aids devoted to the nation’s highest court, has found a new home at Penn State.
The comprehensive, publicly accessible database, which contains information on every case decided by the Supreme Court from its first decision in 1791 to today, has officially transitioned from its longtime overseer, Washington University in St. Louis (WashU), to the Department of Political Science in Penn State’s College of the Liberal Arts.
Michael J. Nelson, department head and professor of political science, was asked to serve as a principal investigator on the database by Lee Epstein, Ethan A.H. Shepley Distinguished University Professor at WashU.
Since its creation four decades ago, the database has come to be regarded as “the spine for all quantitative scholarship on the Supreme Court,” said Nelson, who will collaborate with the college’s McCourtney Institute for Democracy on research, education and outreach efforts that involve the database.
“This is the record for political scientists studying the Supreme Court. What cases got decided each term, how the justices voted — the sort of essential information you need about every case,” Nelson said. “To me, it was important to keep the database moving forward, because it’s been so important to so many studies over decades. For us, it’ll be good for our graduate training, good for undergraduate students. And it’s nice that it’s looped in with the McCourtney Institute and the work they’re doing. It should do a lot for the reputation of the department and the college.”
Clarence Lang, Susan Welch Dean of the College of the Liberal Arts, said the database makes for a timely and significant addition to the college’s research mission.
“As one of the foundational pillars of American democracy, the Supreme Court and its decisions demand rigorous scholarship and journalism, particularly in the wake of the highly consequential cases of the past few years,” Lang said. “Given that, I’m extremely excited and grateful that Michael Nelson and the Department of Political Science will be overseeing this critical research apparatus for many years to come.”
The database was developed in the 1980s at Michigan State University by political scientist Harold Spaeth, whose data extended back as far as the 1950s. Spaeth did his coding entirely by hand on 3-by-5-inch notecards, according to Nelson.
In the late 2000s, the database migrated to WashU as part of a U.S. National Science Foundation-funded project to incorporate all Supreme Court decisions dating back to the nation’s founding, in the process making it more useful to scholars, students and journalists. Nelson, then a graduate student there, was part of the project team.
“They hired undergrads to stand in the copy room and literally copy pages upon pages of these Supreme Court decisions, then sent them to Michigan so Harold could code them,” Nelson recalled with a laugh.
Nelson eventually became a co-principal investigator for the database, which in recent years has inspired offshoot versions in Australia, Israel and the United Kingdom. Epstein will remain a co-principal investigator for the foreseeable future, then eventually yield full day-to-day duties to Nelson.
For the past few months, Nelson worked closely with staff members of the college’s Strategic Communications and Information Technology offices on a complete redesign of the database’s website, making it more user-friendly and giving it “an updated visual presentation.”
“Eventually, we’re going to look to use artificial intelligence to incorporate text of opinions to make sure the coding is reliable and valid,” Nelson said. “There’s kind of the core product, where no matter what else we add or change, we continue to provide what people are used to. But we have opportunities to expand on that. One of the things we’re most known for is computational social science, big data stuff — so we can use some of that Penn State expertise in ways that as we move to a new generation of researchers, we’re making sure we’re providing the data that’s maximally useful to them.”
The database has been a fundamental part of several major scholarly books on the Supreme Court, as well as hundreds of journal articles that have garnered thousands of citations. And it’s been used to complete countless doctoral dissertations, graduate theses and undergraduate honors theses, Nelson said.
More than 3,500 unique monthly users have conducted nearly 22,000 analyses on the database during the last two years alone, he added.
Meanwhile, journalists from publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, 538 and SCOTUSblog have used the database to give readers critical historical context. The Times’ longtime Supreme Court correspondent, Adam Liptak, has worked closely with Nelson, Epstein and WashU Chancellor Andrew D. Martin to provide ongoing data-driven coverage of the Supreme Court’s work. In July, they provided analysis for his article on the court’s recently completed term.
“It’s gratifying to see our data make The New York Times,” Nelson said. “It’s great for the department and the college because it tells people that if you study the court, this is a great place to be. Hopefully, it’ll help with our grad school recruitment, given it is such a great resource for students. We have the opportunity now to build on what’s already this really strong foundation, and I’m very excited to get to do it.”
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