Predicting US Supreme Court Justice Votes

New submitter Pierre Bezukhov writes "Researchers Roger Guimera and Marta Sales-Pardo of Spain set out to ask whether one of the nine Supreme Court justices could be plucked from the bench and replaced with an algorithm that does not take into account the law or the case at issue, but does take into account the other justices' votes and the court's record. These researchers say their computational models, using methods developed to analyze complex social networks, are just as accurate in predicting a justice's decision as forecasts from legal experts. 'We find that Supreme Court justices are significantly more predictable than one would expect from "ideally independent" justices in "ideal courts,"' that is, free agents independently evaluating cases on their merits, free of ideology, the study said."

The Suprme Court can't rule impartially

[Nidi62]

The whole point of the Supreme Court is interpretation. Interpretation of how a law applies to a given situation (and if it even does). This involves more than just case knowledge, it relies on all their experience behind the bench, as well as their own beliefs. The justices are ruling on how they think the law applies, based upon their own knowledge of case law, the language of the law in question, and their belief as to the intention of that law. Impartiality is possible in application; it is much harder, if not impossible, in interpretation.

And this ignores the fact that Supreme Court Justices are in fact political appointees and are selected based upon how they ruled on given cases (ie, in a way the President and majority of Congress ideologically supports). So even selection, well, selects towards those with a certain bias depending on which party is in control of the government at the time of appointment.

This is informative how?

[Hartree]

I used to work with a group that simulated the folding of proteins.

You'd take an assortment of protein sequences and train a neural net on how they folded. Then you try to use that to predict the folding of another different protein that wasn't in the set you trained it on.

But, in this case, they don't try to predict the behavior of an independent case, they use it to predict the behavior of one of the 8 items (justices) they trained the simulation on. That's fine as an exercise in simulation, but using it to reach conclusions on intent and bias is a real reach. I suspect the journalists hyped that part of it a lot more than the researchers themselves.

That's underwhelming enough as is. But what do you use as a measure of how "independent" a judge is?

Assuming no relationship between decisions is ludicrous. On many items that aren't terribly controversial, Ginsburg and Scalia, for example, would rule similarly just because they are trained judges with a background in US law.

Similarly, you wouldn't be surprised if Krugman and Friedman agreed on the proper answer to a question from an Econ 101 textbook, regardless that they would differ massively on more complex issues.

Add to that, the Supreme Court doesn't get the expected and routine "no-brainer" type decisions. It's where the ones with thorny legal interpretation and constitutional issues end up.

I'd be really surprised if you didn't have a correlation between how one particular justice votes and how the rest of the justices vote.

Re:Fantastic

[Jane Q. Public]

That is interesting, but from your usage, it appears that you misunderstand what being an "activist" judge means. An "activist" judge is one who attempts to create law in the courtroom, as opposed to evaluating existing law. It is not a "left vs. right", "liberal vs. conservative" concept.

Re:I don't get it...

[Jane Q. Public]

"So of course they accurately "predict" the historical decisions."

In tests of this nature, the way such algorithms are tested is by giving them a subset of historical data (ideally chosen randomly), then seeing if the program can predict outcomes from historical situations that were not included in the "learning" data.

So your objection has little merit.

Re:Fantastic

[StikyPad]

Actually, the higher courts do create law -- case law -- but despite the gripings of the GP, that's their job. Similarly, the executive branch creates regulations with the force of law. All three branches create law, it's just the methods that differ, and ultimately the legislative branch has the authority to override regulations, rulings, and even the constitution itself.

This is a surprise why?

[spazmonkey]

You have conservative Christian 'law schools' that focus specifically on teaching how to use and apply law toward the explicit agenda of moving it in the direction of biblical principles. By definition, they are designed to only turn out activists. It is their express stated intent, and the way those schools promote themselves as different from traditional law schools they compete with. Is it any surprise then that the only real sizable pool of 'activist' judges are conservative/christian supremacist types?