IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/matsoc/v98y2019icp1-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Computational geometry and the U.S. Supreme Court

Author

Listed:
  • Giansiracusa, Noah
  • Ricciardi, Cameron

Abstract

We use the United States Supreme Court as an illuminative context in which to discuss three different spatial voting preference models: an instance of the widely used single-peaked preferences, and two models that are more novel in which vote outcomes have a strength in addition to a location. We introduce each model from a formal axiomatic perspective, briefly discuss practical motivation for each in terms of judicial behavior, prove mathematical relationships among the voting coalitions compatible with each model, and then study the two-dimensional setting by presenting computational tools for working with the models and by exploring these with judicial voting data from the Supreme Court.

Suggested Citation

  • Giansiracusa, Noah & Ricciardi, Cameron, 2019. "Computational geometry and the U.S. Supreme Court," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 1-9.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:matsoc:v:98:y:2019:i:c:p:1-9
    DOI: 10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2018.12.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165489618300842
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.mathsocsci.2018.12.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daniel Martin Katz & Michael J Bommarito II & Josh Blackman, 2017. "A general approach for predicting the behavior of the Supreme Court of the United States," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(4), pages 1-18, April.
    2. Chad Westerland, 2007. "The Judicial Common Space 1," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 23(2), pages 303-325, June.
    3. Edelman, Paul H., 1997. "A note on voting," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 37-50, August.
    4. Peress, Michael, 2009. "Small Chamber Ideal Point Estimation," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(3), pages 276-290, July.
    5. Segal, Jeffrey A. & Cover, Albert D., 1989. "Ideological Values and the Votes of U.S. Supreme Court Justices," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 83(2), pages 557-565, June.
    6. Martin, Andrew D. & Quinn, Kevin M., 2002. "Dynamic Ideal Point Estimation via Markov Chain Monte Carlo for the U.S. Supreme Court, 1953–1999," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(2), pages 134-153, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mindock, Maxwell R. & Waddell, Glen R., 2019. "Vote Influence in Group Decision-Making: The Changing Role of Justices' Peers on the Supreme Court," IZA Discussion Papers 12317, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Richard Holden & Michael Keane & Matthew Lilley, 2021. "Peer effects on the United States Supreme Court," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(3), pages 981-1019, July.
    3. Noah Giansiracusa, 2023. "Branching on the bench: quantifying division in the supreme court with trees," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 34(1), pages 36-58, March.
    4. Spruk, Rok & Kovac, Mitja, 2019. "Replicating and extending Martin-Quinn scores," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    5. Xiaohong Yu & Zhaoyang Sun, 2022. "The company they keep: When and why Chinese judges engage in collegiality," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(4), pages 936-1002, December.
    6. Keren Weinshall‐Margel, 2011. "Attitudinal and Neo‐Institutional Models of Supreme Court Decision Making: An Empirical and Comparative Perspective from Israel," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 8(3), pages 556-586, September.
    7. Álvaro Bustos & Tonja Jacobi, 2014. "Strategic Judicial Preference Revelation," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 57(1), pages 113-137.
    8. Sarel, Roee & Demirtas, Melanie, 2021. "Delegation in a multi-tier court system: Are remands in the U.S. federal courts driven by moral hazard?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    9. Bertomeu Juan González & Pellegrina Lucia Dalla & Garoupa Nuno, 2017. "Estimating Judicial Ideal Points in Latin America: The Case of Argentina," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 13(1), pages 1-35, March.
    10. Christoph Engel, 2024. "The German Constitutional Court – Activist, but not Partisan?," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2024_04, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    11. Jivas Chakravarthy, 2019. "Ideological diversity in standard setting," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 24(1), pages 113-155, March.
    12. Chen, Daniel L. & Michaeli, Moti & Spiro, Daniel, 2016. "Ideological Perfectionism," IAST Working Papers 16-47, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).
    13. Guimaraesy, Bernardo & Meyerhof Salama, Bruno, 2017. "Contingent judicial deference: theory and application to usury laws," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 86146, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    14. Lerner, Joshua Y. & McCubbins, Mathew D. & Renberg, Kristen M., 2021. "The efficacy of measuring judicial ideal points: The mis-analogy of IRTs," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    15. Guimarães, Bernardo de Vasconcellos & Salama, Bruno Meyerhof, 2017. "Contingent judicial deference: theory and application to usury laws," Textos para discussão 440, FGV EESP - Escola de Economia de São Paulo, Fundação Getulio Vargas (Brazil).
    16. Yonatan Lupu & James H. Fowler, 2013. "Strategic Citations to Precedent on the U.S. Supreme Court," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(1), pages 151-186.
    17. Hausladen, Carina I. & Schubert, Marcel H. & Ash, Elliott, 2020. "Text classification of ideological direction in judicial opinions," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    18. Charles M. Cameron & Jee‐Kwang Park, 2009. "How Will They Vote? Predicting the Future Behavior of Supreme Court Nominees, 1937–2006," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 6(3), pages 485-511, September.
    19. Richard F. Potthoff, 2018. "Estimating Ideal Points from Roll-Call Data: Explore Principal Components Analysis, Especially for More Than One Dimension?," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 7(1), pages 1-27, January.
    20. Keren Weinshall & Udi Sommer & Ya'acov Ritov, 2018. "Ideological influences on governance and regulation: The comparative case of supreme courts," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 12(3), pages 334-352, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:matsoc:v:98:y:2019:i:c:p:1-9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505565 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.