The United States Supreme
Court: Visualizations and
Metrics (60 Years of Data)
Peter Hook
September 18, 2004
PhD Student, Information Science
SLIS Research Forum
Overall Goals
• Gain insight into the work of the Supreme
Court.
• Implement visualization tools for legal scholars
to evaluate the work of the Court.
• Create visually rich teaching aids for legal
instruction. (Concept Maps)
1
Origin of the Data
• All Supreme Court Opinions with West Topic
headings
• 1944 term through the 2003 term
• Harvested and cleaned by hand
• From the Westlaw proprietary database
WEST Topics
2
Data Elements
•
•
•
•
•
•
Case Name
Date of Issue
Chief Justice at Date of Issuance
Topics Assigned by West Publishing
Categories of topics (from West)
Sub-Categories of Topics (from West)
92 Constitutional Law
386 Trespass
170B Federal Courts
360 States
110 Criminal Law
Adderley v. State of Fla.,
Adderley v. State of Fla.,
Adderley v. State of Fla.,
Adderley v. State of Fla.,
Adderley v. State of Fla.,
11/14/1966
11/14/1966
11/14/1966
11/14/1966
11/14/1966
Warren
Warren
Warren
Warren
Warren
7. GOVERNMENT
4. TORTS
7. GOVERNMENT
7. GOVERNMENT
5. CRIMES
B. Systems and Sources of Law
4. TORTS
D. Judicial Powers and Functions, a
A. Political Bodies and Divisions
5. CRIMES
TEMPORAL INSIGHTS
TIMESEARCHER SOFTWARE: Human Computer Interaction
Laboratory at the University of Maryland.
Hochheiser, H., Shneiderman, B. Visual Specification of Queries for
Finding Patterns in Time-Series Data Proceedings Discovery
Science 2001. Available at:
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/timesearcher/.
3
Average Number of Opinions Issued
per Month per Court
January
50
December
40
February
30
March
November
20
10
October
April
0
All
Stone Court
September
May
Vinson Court
Warren Court
August
June
Burger Court
Rehnquist Court
July
4
0
2002
2000
1996
1998
1994
1990
1992
1984
1986
1988
1980
1982
1978
1974
1976
1972
1970
1966
1968
1960
1962
1964
1956
1958
1954
1950
1952
1948
2002
1996
1998
2000
1990
1992
1994
1976
1978
1980
1982
1984
1986
1988
1970
1972
1974
1964
1966
1968
1952
1954
1956
1958
1960
1962
1946
1948
1950
1944
0
1946
1944
Average Number of Topics per Case
Number of Cases
Cases per Term
(Oct. through Sept.)
200
180
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
Term
Average Topics per Case per Term
(Oct. through Sept.)
3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
Term
5
TimeSearcher Reveals a Spike
The Explosion of Civil Rights Litigation
6
COMPARATIVE AREA INSIGHTS
TREEMAP SOFTWARE: Human Computer Interaction Laboratory
at the University of Maryland.
Shneiderman, B. Tree visualization with treemaps: a 2-d spacefilling approach, ACM Transactions on Graphics, vol. 11, 1 (Jan.
1992) 92-99.
West Category by Court
(Normalized by Percentage of Overall Topics Issued by that Court)
7
Topic Frequency Over Entire Dataset
Warren Court Distribution of Topics
8
Rehnquist Court Distribution of Topics
9
INSIGHTS FROM NETWORK
GRAPHING TECHNIQUES
PAJEK SOFTWARE: University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Batagelj, V., & Mrvar, A. Pajek: Program Package for Large
Network Analysis, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. 1997.
Co-Occurrence Objectives
• To map the work of the Supreme Court
based on the co-occurrence of West, toplevel topics.
• To evaluate whether the categories and
sub-categories of West’s Outline of the
Law suggest the manner in which topics
co-occur in cases.
10
Degree of Connectivity
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•
•
•
•
•
Total Nodes -- 289
Range (Degree of Connectivity) – 1 to 250
Mean (Degree of Connectivity) -- 26
Median (Degree of Connectivity) -- 14
Mode (Degree of Connectivity) -- 13
Total Connections between Nodes - 3717
11
Node Color =
West Category
Node Size =
Number of
times topic
appears in the
dataset
12
13
14
Conceptual Schemas
15
PART A
Chapter 16
Chapter 19
Chapter 14
Chapter 24
Chapter 3
Chapter 22
Chapter 2
Acknowledgments
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•
•
•
•
•
Professor Katy Börner
Ketan Mane
Weimao Ke
Rongke Gao
Keith Buckley
Ralph Gaebler
16