Project Description
We seek to catalog the Supreme Court's so-called "Shadow Docket;" e.g., the orders the Court hands down with neither oral argument nor written opinion. Our first goal is simply descriptive: Scholars do not know the extent to which the Court engages in this behavior nor in what types of cases or why. Knowing the universe of such decisions over time will help complete the picture we have of Supreme Court decision making. Armed with these data, we'll be able to meet our second goal: Understanding the degree to which such dispositions effect either legitimacy of the public for the Court or the precedential value of the Court's decisions to the lower courts. To meet these goals, we will find and code all orders handed down by the Court beginning with the most recent term and going back in time as far as possible given time and data limitations. We will present this research and the resulting database to the scholarly community and seek to publish analyses addressing our substantive questions of interest.
Tasks and Responsibilites
The undergraduate researcher will be invaluable in coding these orders. In conjunction with one of my PhD students, we have created a coding form and plan to code orders for as many years as possible. Our first SURF student helped enormously in creating the coding form and troubleshooting the coding process. This new undergraduate student will implement that coding and help edit and extend the coding manual to be used in future data collection. Our last student presented at a national conference, to a very interested audience. The undergraduate student working with us this semester will be an integral part of the coding team and will be involved in subsequent studies and presentations as we continue to add data.
Desired Qualifications
None listed.