The Use of Social Science Data in Supreme Court Decisions

The cultures of law and social science differ markedly as to the kinds of truth they pursue. Law is deductive, presenting its findings as certainties; social science is largely inductive, presenting its conclusions as subject to revision and contingency.Yet the legal community traditionally draws at will and unsystematically on the findings of social science, sometimes with unfortunate results. The authors of this study explore this issue by focusing on the manner in which the United States Supreme Court uses social science data in reaching its decisions. Concentrating on decisions involving the issues of abortion, sex discrimination, and sexual harassment, they show that the use of such data has increased over the last twenty years, but they also show that whether such data are used appears to hinge more on the liberal, conservative, or longheld positions of the judges and the types of cases involved, rather than on the objectivity or validity of the data.By offering insights into how data are used by the Supreme Court, the authors hope to show social scientists how to make their research more suitable for courtroom use and to show the legal community how such data can be used more effectively.

Politics & Social Sciences

SIMON, Rita J.

Erickson, Rosemary J.

Social Sciences

University of Illinois Press

The legal community traditionally has drawn unsystematically and at will on the findings of social science, sometimes with unfortunate results. The authors of this study explore this issue by focusing on the way the United States Supreme Court uses social science data in reaching its decisions. Concentrating on decisions involving abortion, sex discrimination, and sexual harassment, they show that the use of such data has increased over the last twenty years, but that the data's use by the court appears to hinge more on the judges' liberal, conservative, or long-held positions and the types of cases involved than on the objectivity or validity of the data. By offering insights into how data are used by the Supreme Court, the authors hope to show social scientists how to make their research more suitable for courtroom use and to show the legal community how such data can be used more effectively. The volume includes an overview of the kinds of research used, a list of cases in which such research was used, and a discussion of justices and how they voted on cases in which such data were used from 1972 to 1992.

This is a powerful and significant study of armed robbers. From street muggers to bank robbers, they tell why they do it, how they do it and why people get hurt. The study explores the thinking and motives of the robbers and examines what they look for when they plan to rob. Special attention is given to how convenience store robbers differ from other robbers. For the study, 310 armed robbers were surveyed in 1995 in 20 prisons in three states -- Maryland, Washington and Texas. A follow-up of a survey conducted ten years earlier, the findings are compared, and the changes in society and crime during that time are reflected.

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Biographies & Memoirs

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