Vol. 4 No. 8 (August, 1994) pp. 106-109

THE SUPREME COURT COMPENDIUM: DECISIONS, AND DEVELOPMENTS by Lee Epstein, Jeffrey A. Segal, Harold J. Spaeth, and Thomas G. Walker. Washington: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1993. 741 pp. Cloth $54.95. Paper $34.95.

THE SUPREME COURT YEARBOOK by Kenneth Jost. Washington: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1994. 298 pp. Cloth $29.95. Paper $21.95.

Reviewed by Charles A. Johnson, Department of Political Science, Texas A&M University.

Judicial scholars use a variety of key reference books and documents depending on scholarly interests -- the CODE BOOK FOR THE U.S. SUPREME COURT DATA BASE, a copy of the U.S. Constitution, a leading constitutional law case book or two, reports from the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts or reports from relevant state-level agencies, or, perhaps, the CQ'S GUIDE TO THE U.S. SUPREME COURT. Regardless of their interests, all judicial scholars will want to add to their respective reference shelve a copy of the newly published THE SUPREME COURT COMPENDIUM DATA, DECISIONS, AND DEVELOPMENTS by Professors Epstein, Segal, Spaeth, and Walker. This compendium presents important information of interest to behavioral scientists, public law specialists, and individuals interested in institutional aspects of the federal judiciary. Quite simply, this volume will emerge as a common source of information for scholars, teachers, text book writers, and anyone wishing to find information about the Supreme Court and other judicial actors in the U.S.

This volume organizes information in 10 chapters, each opening with a narrative discussion of the particular area. These brief, but quite helpful discussions give explanations for information found in the chapter's tables. The editors have also used these narrative introductions to alert readers to particulars associated with data reported in the tables. More importantly, these discussions include references to selected scholarly work related to the information presented in the chapter. These references are supplemented by a "Selected Readings" section found in an appendix which is organized by chapter, and occasionally by subtopic. Although the references and selected readings do not cover the literature comprehensively, they do provide excellent core reading lists in a variety of areas.

The COMPENDIUM reports information in 166 tables using well over 600 pages of this 741 page volume. A review cannot, obviously, speak to each table. Nevertheless, the following should give a sense of the topics covered in the work. Chapter 1 -- institutional perspective on the Supreme Court, including major historical events, budget data, and legislation affecting the Court. (11 tables) Chapter 2 -- caseload information, including numbers of cases, petitions granted, landmark decisions, decisions holding legislation unconstitutional, and overturned decisions. (14 tables) Chapter 3 -- decisions and outcome

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information, including numbers of different types of decisions and opinions as well as the ideological direction of the outcomes. (8 tables) Chapter 4 -- Pre-Court service biographical information about the justices, including socio- economic- political background information, the sequence of appointments, and Senate actions. (14 tables) Chapter 5 -- On-the-Court biographic information about the justices, including length of service as well as information on locations of justices' personal papers, books written by the justices, and published biographies of the justices. (14 tables) Chapter 6 -- Voting and opinion behavior of the justices, including voting interagreement matrices, types of opinion participation by justice, major opinions, and assignment/authorship matrices. (17 tables) Chapter 7 -- Information on the political environment of the Court, including the lists of relevant executive and congressional officials interacting with the judiciary, success rates for different litigants, and amicus participation before the Court. (22 tables) Chapter 8 -- Public Opinion and the Court, including poll results on a variety of general civil rights/civil liberties issues, specific judicial decisions, and popular views of the Court. (30 tables) Chapter 9 -- The impact of selected Supreme Court decisions, including data on abortion, the death penalty, desegregation , and reapportionment. (10 tables) Chapter 10 -- Selected information on lower federal courts and state courts, including caseload and judge data for Courts of Appeals and for Federal District Courts, special federal courts, and general information about state court systems. (26 tables)

Information included in these tables range from the expected statistical data to narrative snippets to lengthy narrative treatments. Hence, one can find that Justice Douglas issued 208 solo dissents during his tenure on the Court, a number far exceeding the 80 solo dissents issued by Justice Stevens, the runner up in this category. Different information is presented in Table 5-13, "Classic Statements from the Bench," which is organized by topical area. Here, for example, one finds Justice Black's wall of separation statement in EVERSON V. BOARD OF EDUCATION and Justice Marshall's judicial power statement in MARBURY V. MADISON. Lengthier tables are also found giving such information as the verbatim listing of the rules governing the Court's review process (Table 2-1).

I find little to criticize in this volume. One substantive matter concerns the occasions when the editors used their own judgement to produce lists of, for example, landmark decisions of the Court (Table 2-10) or significant opinions of individual justices (Table 6-12). I do not disagree with any element of these lists, but I would like to have had more discussion about the criteria used by the editors to compile the lists. Did they

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consult casebooks? Were citations used? Did they compare lists among themselves and what was the decision rule? Because these lists might become the bases for additional work on important decisions or significant opinions, an explanation for the lists would have been helpful. A second quibble I have concerns the presentation of interagreement scores for the justices. These data are presented in Tables 6-3, 6-4, and 6-5, where each table gives interagreement percentages in particular subject areas for the Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist Courts respectively. It is not clear to me why these three break points were used to report the data. Other possibilities would have been to report the data for entire time period or by natural courts. While these are convenient eras for the Court, I do not see a theoretical justification for this division. Fortunately, the data are drawn from the Supreme Court Data Base and any re-configuration can be accomplished by individual users.

I am confident that THE SUPREME COURT COMPENDIUM will become a widely cited and much used volume by judicial scholars. Its extraordinary coverage, the careful documentation of sources and the clear presentation of data represent an outstanding contribution to the field.

Judicial scholars interested in U.S. Supreme Court's decisions have a variety of sources for information. The texts of the decisions are reported in the U.S. SUPREME COURT REPORTS and in commercial reporters. Decisions are also available on commercial electronic data bases as well as being available almost immediately via INTERNET. Summaries of court terms are available in selected law reviews, such as the annual overview of the previous term in the November issue of the HARVARD LAW REVIEW. And there are numerous casebooks, with updates, for courses in constitutional law and other areas of the law.

A relatively new entry into this area is the SUPREME COURT YEARBOOK series published by Congressional Quarterly. The most recent volume covers the 1992-93 term of the Court and is the fourth volume in the series. Kenneth Jost replaces Joan Biskupic, who was the originator of the series and author of the first three volumes.

The YEARBOOK covers more than the cases decided by the 1992-93 Court. Jost, for example, gives an extensive account of Justice Ginsburg's appointment and confirmation as the Court's newest justice. He also gives statistical summaries of caseloads, voting patterns, and interagreements among the justices for the 1992-93 term. At the heart of this volume, however, are the case summaries for decisions rendered by the Court during the year.

Jost focuses a great deal of attention on what he believes are the ten major decisions of the Courts providing background information about the cases, the legal issues presented to the Court, and decision of the Court. The YEARBOOK also reports excerpts from majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions for these decisions. Curiously, however, these two treatments are in separate chapters and there is no reference in the case summaries to the excerpts from opinions to be found in the later chapter.

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The YEARBOOK also includes case summaries of all decisions rendered by the Court with a opinion. These summaries are divided into twelve categories of law -- business law, courts and procedures, criminal law, election law, federal government, first amendment, immigration law, individual rights, international law, labor law, states, and torts. These summaries also report the vote on the Court and who wrote opinions in the case.

The YEARBOOK closes with a preview of the 1993-94 term. Since the volume appeared well into the this term of the Court, many of the cases highlighted in this review have been decided. Nevertheless, this section offers good summaries of lower court actions and legal issues to be considered by the Court for cases it had accepted for argument in the 1992-93 term.

Appendices for the volume include a description of the way the Court decides cases (a technical description, not one that draws on behavioral explanations of decision making), brief biographies of the justices, a useful glossary of legal terms, and the U.S. Constitution.

For a judicial scholar who does not wish to read Supreme Court decisions directly, this volume offers concise summaries of all decisions rendered with an opinion. But for scholars wishing to know more about these decisions or to read the cases themselves, other sources will be necessary. Readers will not find extensive references to previous cases, even in discussions of the ten most important decisions. Case references remain in the opinion excerpts, but the citations are not included and there is no table of cases with citations included in the volume.

I found this volume to be an interesting summary of the 1992-93 Court's decisions. It is not as technical as the summary of the Term provided by the HARVARD LAW REVIEW, and it is clearer than the cases summaries one finds in various reports. Whether other scholars find the YEARBOOK useful will, of course, depend on the level of specificity they need. My guess is that judicial scholars who teach and do research in constitutional law or some other area of public law will not find the YEARBOOK very helpful. Standing alone, this volume will also not be very helpful to judicial scholars wishing to have only general overviews of the Court's decisions. If you make the investment by purchasing the annual volumes over time, then the set of yearbooks will probably be a useful resource for quick references to Supreme Court decisions.