United States Supreme Court Database 

      (Compiled by Harold Spaeth)


      The Supreme Court Database is the definitive source for researchers, students, journalists, and citizens interested in the U.S. Supreme Court. The Database contains over two hundred pieces of information about each case decided by the Court between the 1791 and 2014 terms. Examples include the identity of the court whose decision the Supreme Court reviewed, the parties to the suit, the legal provisions considered in the case, and the votes of the Justices.


United States District Court Database

      (Compiled by Robert A. Carp and Kenneth L. Manning)


      The Carp-Manning U.S. District Court Case Database contains decision-making data on 110,000+ decisions by federal district court judges handed down from 1927 to 2012.   The dataset includes coded decisions published in the Federal Supplement, the primary publication venue for U.S. district court rulings.  This data is a resource for scholars who conduct quantitative research on the federal courts and complements the U.S. Supreme Court and U.S. Courts of Appeals databases. The data have been compiled by Robert A. Carp, Professor of Political Science at the University of Houston, and Kenneth L. Manning, Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.


Digital Archive of the Papers of Harry A. Blackmun

      (Compiled by Lee Epstein, Jeffrey A. Segal, and Harold J. Spaeth; archived at Northwestern University


Lower Federal Court Confirmation Database, 1977-2004

     (Compiled by Wendy L. Martinek; archived at the Center on Democratic Performance at Binghamton University)

     

     The Lower Federal Confirmation Database contains information on nominations to Article III district and circuit courts from beginning of 1977 through the end of December 2004. The original database was created at the behest of the Constitution Project's Courts Initiative (formerly Citizens for Independent Courts) by Wendy L. Martinek, Binghamton University. This is the most recent update to that original database. Based on the feedback provided by users of the original database, the database has been split into two files: one containing the data related to senatorial processing of nominations and one containing the data related to presidential processing of nominations. All documentation is provided in Adobe pdf format.​


State Supreme Court Database

     (Compiled by Paul Brace and Melinda Gann Hall; archived at Rice University)


U.S. Supreme Court Amicus Curiae Database, 1946-2001

     (Compiled by Paul Collins; archived at the University of North Texas)


     The U.S. Supreme Court Amicus Curiae Database, 1946-2001 contains data on amicus curiae briefs filed in the U.S. Supreme Court's orally argued cases from 1946-2001. This database contains a wealth of information on amicus curiae participation in the U.S. Supreme Court, including the number of amicus briefs filed for the petitioner, respondent, and              those failing to identify their preferred disposition: the number of amicus briefs advocating for the liberal and conservative positions; as well as data on the amicus curiae activity on the U.S. Solicitor General. The data are in Stata 10.0 format, compressed in a ZIP file. The data folder also contains the data and do files necessary to replicate the statistical analyses        published in Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making (Collins 2008). The Data on amicus curiae briefs filed from 1946-1995 were collected primarily by Kearney and Merrill (2000). The data on amicus curiae briegs from 1995-2001, in addition to those cases missing from the Kearney and Merrill (2000) database, were              collected by Collins. If you use the data, please cite the following: 


  • Collins, Paul M., Jr. 2008. Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 
  • Kearney, Joseph D. and Thomas W. Merrill. 2000 "The Influence of Amicus Curiae Briefs on the Supreme Court." University of PennsylvaniaLaw Review 148(3): 743-853. 


U.S. Supreme Court Justices Database

     (Compiled by Lee Epstein, Thomas G. Walker, Nancy Staudt, Scott Hendrickson, and Jason Roberts; archived at Northwestern University)


     This is a multi-user, public databased containing a wealth of information on individuals nominated (whether confirmed or not) to the U.S. Supreme Court. Specifically, the database houses 263 variables, falling roughly into five categories: identifiers, backgrounds characteristics and personal attributes, nomination and confirmation, service on the Court, and departures from the bench. These data are available from the website of Lee Epstein, the Beatrice Kuhn Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University School of Law. 


Databases

United States Courts of Appeals Databases

      Includes the following separate databases:

  • The Original Courts of Appeals Database (Compiled by Donald R. Songer)
  • Update to the Courts of Appeals Database (Compiled by Ashlyn K. Kuersten and Susan B. Haire)
  • Shepardizing the Courts of Appeals (Compiled by Rorie Spill Soberg)


Attributes of the United States Federal Court Judges

      (Originally compiled by Gary Zuk, Deborah J. Barrow and Gerard Gryski; extended by Gerard Gryski and Gary Zuk)


National High Courts Databases

      (Compiled by Stacia L. Haynie, Reginald S. Sheehan, Donald R. Songer, and C. Neal Tate)


The Institutional History of the U.S. District Courts

      (Compiled by Gerard Gryski, Gary Zuk, and Sheldon Goldman) 


Data Archived at The Songer Project

Data Archived at Other Locations