Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T10:23:31.303Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Predicting Supreme Court Cases Probabilistically: The Search and Seizure Cases, 1962-1981

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Jeffrey A. Segal
Jeffrey A. Segal*
Affiliation:
State University of New Yorkat Stony Brook
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The overwhelming concensus of Fourth Amendment scholars is that the Supreme Court's sea and seizure cases are a mess. This article proposes that the confusion arises from the manner in which the cases were studied, not from the decisions themselves. A legal model with variables that me the prior justification of the search, the nature of the intrusion, and a few mitigating circumstance used to explain the Court's decisions on the reasonableness of a given search or seizure. The parameters are estimated through probit.

The results show that the search and seizure cases are much more ordered than had commonly been believed. Virtually all of the estimates are as expected. Additionally, the Court is shown to act favorably toward the federal government than toward the states. Preliminary analysis suggests the model has predictive as well as explanatory value.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 78 , Issue 4 , December 1984 , pp. 891 - 900
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aldrich, J.Electoral choice in 1972: A test of some theorems of the spatial model of electoral competition. Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 1977, 5, 215–237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aldrich, J., & Cnudde, C.Probing the bounds of conventional wisdom: A comparison of regression, probit and discriminant analysis. American Journal of Political Science, 1975, 19, 571–608.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Amsterdam, A. G.Perspectives on the Fourth Amendment. Minnesota Law Review, 1974, 58, 349–447.Google Scholar
Bickel, A.The least dangerous branch: the Supreme Court at the bar of politics, U.S.A. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963.Google Scholar
Cook, B. B.Public opinion and federal judicial policy. American Journal of Political Science, 1977, 21, 567–600.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Croyle, J. L.Measuring and explaining disparities in felony sentences: courtroom work group factors and race, sex and socioeconomic influences on sentence severity. Political Behavior, 1983, 5, 135–153.Google Scholar
Dworkin, R. B.Fact style adjudication and the Fourth Amendment: the limits of lawyering. Indiana Law Journal, 1973, 48, 329–368.Google Scholar
Fisher, F. M.The mathematical analysis of Supreme Court decisions and abuse of quantitative methods. American Political Science Review, 1958, 53, 321–338.Google Scholar
Freedman, M.Roosevelt and Frankfurter. Boston: Little, Brown, 1967.Google Scholar
Gibson, J. L.Judges' role orientations, attitudes and decisions: an interactive model. American Political Science Review, 1978, 72, 911–924. (a)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, J. L.Race as a determinant of criminal sentences: a methodological critique and a case study. Law and Society Review, 1978, 12, 455–478. (b)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hagan, J.Extra-legal attributes and criminal sentencing: an assessment of a sociological viewpoint. Law and Society Review, 1974, 8, 337–363.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kort, F.Predicting Supreme Court cases mathematically: analysis of the right to counsel cases. American Political Science Review, 1957, 57, 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kort, F.Content analysis of judicial opinions and rules of law. In Schubert, G. (Ed.). Judicial decision making. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1963.Google Scholar
Kort, F.Regression analysis and discriminant analysis: An application of R. A. Fisher's theorem to data in political science. American Political Science Review, 1973, 67, 555–559.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LaFave, W.Search and seizure (Vols. 1-3). St. Paul, Minn.: West, 1978.Google Scholar
Landynski, J.Search and seizure and the Supreme Court. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966.Google Scholar
Pindyck, R. S., & Rubinfeld, D. L.Econometric models and economic forecasts. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976.Google Scholar
Rohde, D., & Spaeth, H.Supreme Court decision making. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1976.Google Scholar
Rokeach, M.Beliefs, attitudes and values. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1968.Google Scholar
Schubert, G.Quantitative analysis of judicial behavior. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1954.Google Scholar
Spaeth, H.Supreme Court policy making. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1979.Google Scholar
Spaeth, H., & Parker, D.Effects of attitude toward situation upon attitude toward object. Journal of Psychology, 1969, 73, 173–182.Google Scholar
Spaeth, H., & Teger, S.Activism and restraint: a cloak for the justices' policy preferences. In Halpern, S. C. & Lamb, C. W. (Eds.). Supreme Court activism and restraint. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington, 1982.Google Scholar
Tanenhaus, J., Schick, M., Muraskin, M., & Rosen, D.The Supreme Court's certiorari jurisdiction and cue theory. In Schubert, G. (Ed.). Judicial decision making. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1963.Google Scholar
Tate, C. N.Personal attribute models of the voting behavior of U.S. Supreme Court justices: Liberalism in civil liberties and economic decisions, 1946-1978. Ajnerican Political Science Review, 1981, 75, 355–367.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ulmer, S. S.Discriminant analysis and an error criterion. In Schubert, G. (Ed.). Judicial behavior. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964.Google Scholar
Ulmer, S. S.The discriminant function and a theoretical context for its use in estimating the votes of judges. In Grossman, J. & Tanenhaus, J. (Eds.). Frontiers of judicial research. New York: John Wiley, 1969.Google Scholar
Wasby, S. L.Continuity and change from the Warren Court to the Burger Court. Pacific Palisades, Calif.: Goodyear, 1976.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.