New Data on State Supreme Courts. Co-authored with Matthew E.K Hall (University of Notre Dame). 2013. State Politics and Policy Quarterly, 13(4).
The study of U.S. state supreme courts has been significantly constrained by a lack of available data. To remedy this deficiency, this article introduces an original dataset of every state supreme court ruling from 1995 through 2010. We utilize automated textual analysis to search the text of thousands of state supreme court decisions and extract critical information on each case. This automated coding approach produces reliable measures of state supreme court decision making when compared to data collected by human coders. We present trends in docket size, dissent rates, and legal issues being heard in front of the court. This new dataset will offer scholars numerous opportunities to expand our knowledge of judicial politics in the American states.
This is an ongoing project currently funded by the National Science Foundation (SES-1424013). We are currently extending the time frame of the data from 1953-2014, as well as expanding the depth of the data. In addition to the raw data, scaled ideal points from Windett, Harden, and Hall 2015 are also available below.
You may access the complete data and codebook here.
You may access the ideal points and codebook here.
jasonwindett.com 