scotus_majority — SCOTUS majority opinions

Description

Networks of citations among majority opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), compiled by J. H. Fowler and S. Jeon. Nodes are cases (majority opinions) and a directed edge indicates that the opinion of one case cites another case. The two versions come from two data releases:

2008: data accompanying Fowler and Jeon (Social Networks, 2008), covering the cases in the U.S. Reports from 1754 to 2002. The citations were extracted from the text of the opinions. Edges point from the citing case to the cited case. Only cases that are part of at least one citation are included.
2007: replication data of Fowler et al. (Political Analysis, 2007), with cases decided from 1791 to 2005 identified by their LexisNexis identifiers. Edges point from the citing case to the cited case. For about 9,600 nodes no metadata is available, and their properties are empty (text) or NaN (numerical).

The networks have the following properties:

(Node) name (2008): the numerical case identifier of the data set.
(Node) usid (2008): the U.S. Reports citation (e.g. 3US320).
(Node) parties (2008): the names of the parties to the case.
(Node) year (2008): the year of the case.
(Node) overruled (2008): the identifier of the case that overruled it (0 if none).
(Node) overruling (2008): the list of identifiers of the cases it overruled.
(Node) oxford, liihc (2008): whether the case appears in the Oxford list of salient cases and in the Legal Information Institute's list of important cases, respectively.
(Node) lexid (2007): the LexisNexis identifier.
(Node) usid (2007): the U.S. Reports citation.
(Node) name (2007): the parties to the case.
(Node) citedyr_num (2007): the year of the case.
(Node) citingyr_num (2007): the year in which the variables were measured (2005).
(Node) age (2007): the age of the case in years.
(Node) auth_num (2007): the authority score (the hub/authority centrality of Kleinberg) of the case.
(Node) insc_num, apin_num, stin_num (2007): the number of citations the case received from the Supreme Court, from federal appeals courts and from state courts, respectively.
(Node) insc_num_lag, apin_num_lag, stin_num_lag, outsc_num_lag, sc_cumul_cites_lag (2007): lagged versions of these counts and of the outward and cumulative Supreme Court citations.
(Node) oxford_num, cq_num, nyt_num (2007): whether the case appears in the Oxford Guide to Supreme Court decisions, in the Congressional Quarterly guide to the Supreme Court, or on the front page of the New York Times, respectively.
(Node) amiciz_num (2007): a standardized count of amicus curiae briefs filed in the case.
(Node) size_num (2007): the number of cases in the network at the time of measurement.
(Node) The properties of 2007 are the variables of the replication data, used as validation measures of legal importance in the paper; their precise definitions are given there.

Tags

Informational Legal Unweighted Metadata Temporal

Added

2020-09-26

Citation

J. H. Fowler and S. Jeon, "The Authority of Supreme Court Precedent." Social Networks 30(1), 16-30 (2008) 10.1016/j.socnet.2007.05.001 Sci-Hub
J. H. Fowler et al., "Network Analysis and the Law: Measuring the Legal Importance of Supreme Court Precedents." Political Analysis 15(3), 324-346 (2007) 10.1093/pan/mpm011 Sci-Hub

Upstream URL [Errno 111] Connection refused

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/XMBQL6
https://web.archive.org/web/20210412235953/http://fowler.ucsd.edu/judicial.htm

Networks

Tip: click on a column header to sort the list, or hover over it for a description.

Column legend

$\left<k\right>$: Mean degree
$\sigma_k$: Standard deviation of the degrees
$\lambda_h$: Largest eigenvalue of the Hashimoto (non-backtracking) matrix
$\tau$: Random walk mixing time
$r$: Degree assortativity
$c$: Global clustering coefficient
$\oslash$: (Pseudo-) diameter
$S$: Relative size of the largest component
NPs: Node properties
EPs: Edge properties

Name	Nodes	Edges	$\left<k\right>$	$\sigma_k$	$\lambda_h$	$\tau$	$r$	$c$	$\oslash$	$S$	Kind	Mode	NPs	EPs	gt	GraphML	GML	csv
2008	25,417	216,738	8.53	21.23	61.45	15.59	0.18	0.13	13	1.00	Directed	Unipartite	name usid parties year overruled overruling oxford liihc		1019 KiB	1.6 MiB	1.6 MiB	1.5 MiB
2007	34,613	202,167	5.84	17.39	39.09	189.06	-0.04	0.08	12	0.99	Directed	Unipartite	lexid usid name amiciz_num auth_num oxford_num cq_num nyt_num insc_num apin_num stin_num citedyr_num citingyr_num size_num age insc_num_lag apin_num_lag stin_num_lag outsc_num_lag sc_cumul_cites_lag		1.5 MiB	2.2 MiB	2.1 MiB	2.1 MiB

Ridiculograms^*

^* These are automatically generated force-directed visualizations, and can be quite meaningless for networks both big and small. They should not be taken seriously as sources of scientific insight. See here for a discussion.