Examining Supreme Court Networks to Understand its Operation

Patrick Doreian

Friday, June 22th 2018, 14h, salle 26-00/101

The nature of the Supreme Court, its decisions, the principle of Stare Decisis are described. This is followed by a listing of the Supreme Court networks that are considered. This includes: the citation network of decisions citing earlier decisions (1789-2001); coherent clusters of decisions obtained by examining the extent to which they are co-cited by later decisions; signed two-mode networks featuring Justices and their votes for annual terms of the Court; one-mode signed networks of justices with the extent to which they vote with or against each other; and signed networks of Courts overturning decisions of prior Courts or their own decisions. Strategies for analyzing these networks are presented along with the subsequent results. Throughout, the network results are linked to substantive topics and constitutional principles. A long-term research agenda is presented.