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Description & Citation--Study No. 9422

Bibliographic Description

ICPSR Study No.:9422
 
Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09422
 
Title:United States Supreme Court Judicial Database, 1953-1997 Terms
 
Principal Investigator(s):Harold J. Spaeth
 
Series:United States Supreme Court Judicial Database Terms Series
 
Funding Agency:National Science Foundation.
 
Grant Number:SES-8313773
 
Bibliographic Citation:Spaeth, Harold J. UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT JUDICIAL DATABASE, 1953-1997 TERMS [Computer file]. 9th ICPSR version. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University, Dept. of Political Science [producer], 1998. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1999. doi:10.3886/ICPSR09422
 

Scope of Study

Summary:This data collection encompasses all aspects of United States Supreme Court decision-making from the beginning of the Warren Court in 1953 to the completion of the most recent term of the Rehnquist Court. In this collection, distinct aspects of the Court's decisions are covered by six types of variables: (1) identification variables including citations and docket numbers, (2) background variables offering information on how the Court took jurisdiction, origin and source of case, and the reason the Court granted cert, (3) chronological variables covering date of decision, Court term, and natural court, (4) substantive variables including legal provisions, issues, and direction of decision, (5) outcome variables supplying information on disposition of case, winning party, formal alteration of precedent, and declaration of unconstitutionality, and (6) voting and opinion variables pertaining to how individual justices voted, their opinions and interagreements, and the direction of their votes.
 
Subject Term(s):case processing, court cases, disposition (legal), judicial decisions, judicial review, legal history, Supreme Court decisions, Supreme Court justices, twentieth century, United States Supreme Court
 
Geographic Coverage:United States
 
Time Period:1953 - 1997
 
Date(s) of Collection:1984 - 1998
 
Universe:United States Supreme Court decisions from the beginning of the Warren Court in 1953 through the completion of the most recent term of the Rehnquist Court.
 
Data Type:event/transaction data
 
Data Collection Notes:(1) The data collection contains undocumented codes. (2) The codebook is provided as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file. The PDF file format was developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be accessed using PDF reader software, such as the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information on how to obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is provided through the ICPSR Website on the Internet.
 

Methodology

Data Source:UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT REPORTS, Lawyers' Edition
 

Access and Availability

Note:A list of the data formats available for this study can be found in the summary of holdings. Detailed file-level information (such as record length, case count, and variable count) is listed in the file manifest.
 
Original ICPSR Release:1990-12-04
 
Version History:The last update of this study occurred on 2005-11-04.
 
  2005-11-04 - On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable, and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to reflect these additions.
 
  1999-04-26 - Data for the 1997 terms have been added to the data file, data definition statements, and codebook, and the codebook is now available as a PDF file.
 
  1998-05-20 - Data for the 1996 terms have been added, and the codebook is now available as a PDF file.
 
Dataset(s):
  • DS1: United States Supreme Court Judicial Database, 1953-1997 Terms
 

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