The flagship university has become the new home of the U.S. Supreme Court Database, an expansive record of every case decided by the Supreme Court from 1791 to the present.
Journalists, researchers and students utilizing the tool can explore more than 200 pieces of information about each of the 30,000 cases that have been decided by the court. Information is organized in two data sets: one that is case-centered, and another that is justice-centered.
"This is the record for political scientists studying the Supreme Court," Michael J. Nelson, Penn State political science department head and professor, said in a news release. "What cases got decided each term, how the justices voted — the sort of essential information you need about every case."
Developed in the 1980s at Michigan State University, the database was most recently monitored by Washington University in St. Louis.
Now in Penn State's hands, the university's political science department doesn't plan to stagnantly approach this research giant.
Penn State officials have already signaled they would like to use artificial intelligence to incorporate the text of opinions to ensure the database's coding is reliable. "Penn State expertise" will lend itself to this goal, said Mr. Nelson, who serves as the database's principal investigator.
"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," Mr. Nelson said. "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."
Mr. Nelson and Penn State's McCourtney Institute for Democracy will collaborate on research, education and outreach efforts. Referring to the database as "the spine for all quantitative scholarship on the Supreme Court," Mr. Nelson envisions it will benefit both undergraduate and graduate students at Penn State.
Clarence Lang, dean of Penn State's College of the Liberal Arts, hopes the database will bolster 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," Mr. Lang said in the news release. "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 can be accessed at scdb.la.psu.edu.
©2024 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
