Classification of majority opinions and headnotes written by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

Dataset

Description

This is data to accompany an article by Linda L. Berger and Eric C. Nystrom, "A Rhetorical-Computational Analysis of Justice Antonin Scalia's 'Remarkable Influence': The Unexpected Importance of Deceptively Unanimous and Contested Majority Opinions," Journal of Appellate Practice and Process 20, no. 2 (2020). In "scalia-HN-with-ruletype.tsv," Berger classified each headnote from a Scalia-authored majority opinion as one of the following rhetorical types: argument, scalia rule, or preexisting rule. (See article for further explanation of these categories.) Organized by SCDB ID and headnote number. In "unanimity.tsv," Berger addressed each case with a Scalia-authored majority opinion, assessing the degree of unanimity, which may or may not be the same as that implied by the for/against vote in the case. Fields include case SCDB ID, majority-minority vote, and degree of unanimity. Both data files are in Tab-separated format. For further information, please contact the authors.
Date made availableJul 12 2019
PublisherZenodo

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