  |
|
|
|
Statistical analysis has been successfully applied to all manner of social issues, from demographics to economics. The Oakland Athletics and the Boston Red Sox have even demonstrated that breaking baseball down to the numbers can help compensate for a limited player payroll. It is also possible to misapply statistical analysis to mislead. Sometimes this is done in error, sometimes with a deliberate intention to deceive. Public opinion polls are perhaps the most common way to lend a patina of statistical certainty to partisan persuasion. Joel Best has even written a book, Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists. Hence, when someone successfully and honestly applies information theory to a political question it deserves special attention.
In June of this year, in an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science , Dr. Lawrence Sirovich of the Department of Biomathematical Sciences at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine attempted to mathematically characterize decisions by the second William Rehnquist Court. This Court is comprised of the members since the last appointment to the Court of Stephen Breyer in 1994 by President Bill Clinton. Sirovich included in his analysis only those decisions for which there were nine clear separate decisions. Some cases are just issued "by the court" with no delineation of the vote. In other cases, one judge may have recused himself or herself. In still other cases, judges may split their decision with respect to different parts of a case. In all, he retained about 70% of the cases. Sirovich then considered two possible models of the court: an "omniscient" court and a "platonic" court. In the omniscient limit, each judge knows the appropriate outcome and all nine judges arrive at the same decision. All court decisions are then 9-0 judgments. In the opposite, platonic limit, all the cases are extremely close and the likelihood of each judge voting a particular way is 50%. There is no way to predict which way a judge will vote on a platonic court. Of course the real statistics lie somewhere in between these extremes. Nonetheless, it is remarkable that 47% of the Rehnquist Court's decisions are unanimous 9-0 judgments, reflecting a tendency to an omniscient court. If the issues in this many cases are so clear, that the Court has no difficulty arriving at a unanimous conclusion, it is a shame that these cases have to be adjudicated by the Supreme Court. Go To Page: 1 2
The copyright of the article The Supreme Court by the Numbers in Conservative Politics is owned by . Permission to republish The Supreme Court by the Numbers in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
|
|
|
|
