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Predicting Supreme Court Decisions Mathematically: A Quantitative Analysis of the “Right to Counsel” Cases

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Fred Kort
Fred Kort
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
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Extract

This study represents an attempt to apply quantitative methods to the prediction of human events that generally have been regarded as highly uncertain, namely, decisions by the Supreme Court of the United States. The study is designed to demonstrate that, in at least one area of judicial review, it is possible to take some decided cases, to identify factual elements that influenced the decisions, to derive numerical values for these elements by using a formula, and then to predict correctly the decisions of the remaining cases in the area specified. The analysis will be made independently of what the Court said by way of reasoning in these cases; it will rely only on the factual elements which have been emphasized by the justices in their opinions and on their votes to affirm or set aside convictions. Changes in Court personnel made no decisive difference in the pattern of judicial action in this area; so the analysis will not need to take into account the fact that twenty-five different justices have occupied the nine seats on the Court during the period covered, i.e., the past quarter century.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , March 1957 , pp. 1 - 12
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1957

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References

1 Beany, William M., The Right to Counsel in American Courts (Ann Arbor, 1955), p. 194CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Footnotes in the quotation renumbered.

2 See Va. L. Rev., Vol. 33, p. 731 (Nov., 1947)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 See So. Calif. L. Rev., Vol. 22, p. 259 (April, 1949)Google Scholar.

4 See Green, J. R., Mich. L. Rev., Vol. 46, pp. 869, 898 (May, 1948)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Gibbs v. Burke, 337 U.S. 773, 781 (1949) (per Reed, J.).

6 Haley v. Ohio, 332 U.S. 596, 601 (1948) (Frankfurter, J., joining in reversal of judgment).

7 Uveges v. Pennsylvania, 335 U.S. 437, 440–41 (1948) (per Reed, J.). Footnotes renumbered. Emphasis supplied.

8 See Rice v. Olson, 324 U.S. 786, 788–89; Walker v. Johnston, 312 U.S. 275, 286; Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 468.

9 See e.g., Wade v. Mayo, 334 U.S. 672, 683–84; De Meerleer v. Michigan, 329 U.S. 663, 664–65; Betts v. Brady, supra, at 472, Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45, 51–52, 71.

10 See e.g., Townsend v. Burke, 334 U.S. 736, 739–41; De Meerleer v. Michigan, supra at 665; Smith v. O'Grady, 312 U.S. 329, 332–33.

11 See Rice v. Olson, 324 U.S. 786, 789–91.

12 If a factor appears only in cases decided against the petitioner (this situation occurs only in one instance), the preliminary value is derived from the case in which the largest number of dissenting votes support the claim of the petitioner.

13 Most preliminary values are decimal fractions less than 1 (see Table IV). Since the square root of a fraction less than 1 is larger than the fraction itself, the preliminary value of the pivotal factor under investigation is enlarged by drawing the square root, and it is further enlarged by multiplication by 10. The enlargement retains the original mathematical characteristic of the preliminary value and, at the same time, helps to avoid negative values in the process of the subsequent deduction.

14 The square, divided by 10, of any number larger than 0 and smaller than 10—the numerical range which includes almost all totals of the preliminary values of the collateral factors—is a positive quantity smaller than the number itself. This operation preserves the proper reducing effect of the collateral pivotal factors on the factor under investigation, but moderates it, again in the interest of avoiding negative values.

15 This final step is still necessary to prevent the occurrence of negative values in cases in which relatively many pivotal factors are involved. The permissible minimum for such a constant is 5, dictated by the case of De Meerleer v. Michigan, which—with a smaller constant than 5—would yield negative intermediary values.

16 287 U.S. 45, at 57.

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