The U.S. Supreme Court Database, which is often used by researchers and journalists, is now housed at Penn State.
The database doesn’t have any sort of physical form, rather, it’s a digital record dating back to 1791 of what cases were decided each term, and how the justices voted.
“The database is essentially just a giant spreadsheet," said Michael Nelson, the political science department head at Penn State. He’s spearheading the effort to move the database from its former home at Washington University in St. Louis.
Penn State built a new website to support Nelson and the retiring Washington University researcher’s efforts to code each court decision based on publicly available opinions.
“You know, things from, 'Was the decision liberal or conservative?’ ‘What sort of person was suing?’ ‘What did the lower court do?’ And package it into a database that students and professors and journalists use to inform the public about the court," Nelson said.
Nelson said the database is helpful for tracking trends. He said it’s been cited in several major scholarly books on the Supreme Court and hundreds of journal articles.
Major media outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post have also referenced the U.S. Supreme Court Database.
