Case Salience in the State Supreme Courts: An Update

• In Event: New Measures in Judicial Politics

Abstract

In this research, we update the measure of case salience for state supreme courts originally developed by Vining and Wilhelm (2011). Based on Epstein and Segal’s (2000) media-based measure of U.S. Supreme Court case salience, the Vining and Wilhelm measure captures political rather than legal significance. The original measure was compatible with the Brace-Hall State Supreme Court Data Project (SSCDP), covering the period from 1995 to 1998. Our update to the measure is now compatible with the Hall-Windett Data on State Supreme Court Outcomes (2013), which is a more contemporary source for state supreme court data and includes years from 1995 to 2019. Our research will discuss this new update, provide descriptive statistics for the data, and offer comparison with prior analysis. We also review the relationship between case salience and judicial behavior in state supreme courts.

Authors

• Teena Wilhelm

• Richard L. Vining, University of Georgia