Researching the Supreme Court: Nominations and Data

Supreme Court Research is incredibly varied, and the sources are plentiful, so the Legal Beagle suggested we introduce you to resources on two specific aspects of the Supreme Court: nominations and data about the Supreme Court and its cases.

On February 25, President Biden nominated circuit judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for the United States Supreme Court to fill the seat vacated by Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement. Because a good researcher never wastes good research that is at their fingertips, we wanted to point out the fantastic guide on Supreme Court Nominations maintained by our colleagues at the Georgetown Law Library, which includes a page on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination. There you can read biographies and more about her, including documents on her prior nominations for court service, her opinions, and publications.

To learn more about Supreme Court nominations and Justices, check out HeinOnline’s History of Supreme Court Nominations, an excellent resource to start your research. The main page of this resource contains the hearings and reports issued by Congress as part of the review of Supreme Court nominees for all nominations from 1916 to present. Of special interest, this publication covers both successful and unsuccessful nominations. In addition to the nomination documents, you can browse the collection by justice going back to 1789. When you browse by justice, HeinOnline provides links to books in its collections as well as scholarly articles chosen by their editors that either discuss the justice or were written by the justice.

If you are a data geek, you are going to LOVE The Supreme Court Compendium: Data, Decisions, and Developments (2012 edition - newest edition on order). This book does a deep dive into and provides extensive data on the Supreme Court’s history, composition, cases, outcomes and trends, nominations, voting, ideology, political background, public opinion, and impact. Its companion database provides empirical researchers data files that they can use to study the Supreme Court, with extensive documentation to make the best use of the data. For those of us who do not enjoy working with data files, the Analysis tab allows you to use a search template  to select and combine data parameters and produce a report organized by citation, docket number, or issue/legal provision. For example, out of 142 First Amendment religion cases since 1946, five found a municipal or local ordinance unconstitutional, and one of them involved Rhode Island (Fowler v. Rhode Island, 345 U.S. 67). The database also provides links to retrieve the case from Lexis, Westlaw, or FindLaw.

An interesting aside: Did you know that in RWU Law’s 29-year history, eight Supreme Court Justices have addressed RWU Law students? This excerpt from the news story about Justice Ginsburg’s visit in 2018 lists our esteemed visitors:

Ginsburg’s visit marks the eighth time that a sitting or retired U.S. Supreme Court justice has addressed RWU School of Law students. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy delivered the law school’s first commencement address in 1996, and law students have since heard from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. (2008), Justice Antonin Scalia (2008), Justice Stephen G. Breyer (2011), Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. (2012), Justice Elena Kagan (2013) and retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (2013).

We hope that this overview inspires you to conduct Supreme Court Research. There are 1000s of books and resources on the U.S. Supreme Court and its justices in the RWU Law Library. For help researching specific aspects of the Supreme Court or its Justices, please Ask A Librarian.