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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."
These social networks and the like. Could it be that they're correlated with the issues of the case in unexpected ways? Left-wing democratic types don't bring many cases arguing for gun rights, for instance. Just sayin'.
I wish a law clerk had written the last sentence of the summary.
It might have had a chance of being intelligible.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Now Thomas is going to the Halting-Problem-Buster trick, by getting a copy of this program and ruling the opposite of whatever it predicts he's going to do.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Algorithms like this have to be modeled after the historical decisions that the justices decided upon. So of course they accurately "predict" the historical decisions. So how do they know how accurate these things are for future decisions? I couldn't RTFA because the damn article isn't loading on my crappy government Internet connection.
Wait, what? Supreme court justices have political opinions? Who would have thunk it.
Law Clerks write the decisions, but a good judge decides what the decision will be. In SCOTUS, the judges get bench briefs from their clerks before oral argument, plus briefs from either side. Then they retire after the case is argued and go around the table, with the least senior justice speaking first and giving his impression of the case / comments / where he'll come out. It goes in order of reverse seniority so that the senior justice speaks last in order to get the benefit of hearing everyone else first. Then they have clerks write opinions based on their decision. Occasionally there is a realignment after reading the opinions that are drafted.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Yet another reason that people shouldn't fear the coming rule of the computer overlord...
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
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.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
The whole point of the legal system is that courts don1t just hand out verdicts randomly, but according to the laws available for everyone. Without that, people wouldn't know how to act legally. In fact, ideally one should be able to predict what a courts decision would be in every situation. unfortunately, the legal systems of the world are too complicated/contradictory for that.
They are supposed to evaluate based on the Constitution of the United States.
'On the merits' is arbitrary because whomever is evaluating will do so according to their own ideas of good and bad, of what works and what doesn't. In some cases, this kind of freedom to decide on whatever basis you like can be interesting or liberating, but it's not the point of SCOTUS.
Obviously there will still be their own ideas on good and bad even with an agreed-upon standard, but having to explain your legal reasoning relative to the Constitution versus just having to explain your reasoning are two very different tasks. Writing a good dissent is just as challenging as writing a good ruling.
... my dear WATSON. ;)
From "The Path of the Law" in Harvard Law Review volume 10 (1897).
In other words, law is nothing more than a prediction of how judges will rule.
So, in other words, the judges on the Supreme Court are consistent: So consistent that you can determine exactly what "ideology" (read: principles) are guiding their decisions and replace them with a rote algorithm that would make decisions based on the same principles. Even if I don't agree with a judge's principles, I'd rather see them follow some principle consistently, rather than have them act like "flip-flopping" politicians, taking whatever position is pragmatic, expedient, or profitable at the moment.
Liberty in your lifetime
It makes perfect sense if you insert the closing quote in the right place. It appears to have been omitted.
They are supposed to evaluate based on the Constitution of the United States.
The problem is that the Constitution doesn't actually tell you the answer in 99% of cases. Take the case currently up for decision about the police attaching a GPS tracker to the suspect's car without a warrant. The Fourth Amendment says this:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
It doesn't say anything specifically about GPS tracking devices. Whether it applies to them is entirely a matter of opinion. It's a policy question. There are arguments for both sides. There is no right or wrong answer until such time as the SCOTUS tells us what it is.
The idea that courts should interpret the law in any kind of consistent way is incompatible with allowing the legislature to pass ambiguous laws. Every ambiguity has to be resolved one way or another and the choice in the case of first impression is largely discretionary, which means it gets made according to the judge's political preferences.
The only way to stop that would be for the court, rather than interpreting the law, to instead strike down any piece of legislation containing an ambiguity and make the legislature go back and fix it. That would keep the legislature in charge of all the policy decisions. Whether putting the legislature in charge of all the policy decisions is a good idea is a different question.
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.
I liked my time in law school. Nothing pissed off a law-worshiper more than pointing out that the Supreme Court was a means to code unreasoned opinion into law, as the decisions use law to justify opinions, the opposite of what the courts assert (where they say they come to their opinions through examining the law, rather than force their personal opinions into law). The legal experts have been able to predict not only the direction in which they vote, but also the reasons they would give. But it's interesting to learn that an algorithm is sufficient, with no analyzation of the facts and law necessary.
Learn to love Alaska
He'll do what everyone else did before him. Follow the parts he likes, and ignore the rest. Not even the Libertarians want a strict constitutionalist. Their ideology is a little closer to that, so it seems that way sometimes, but if there is a conflict between the Constitution and their ideology, the ideology will trump the Constitution at every turn.
Learn to love Alaska
That's because the Supreme Court isn't simply the last court of appeals. Deciding cases on their individual merits is what the rest of the judicial system is for. The Supremes don't accept cases because the facts are in question, but rather because the law is in question. Determining what the law should mean is an inherently ideological question, which is why political ideology has been a litmus test for Supreme Court appointments for so long.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
So basically, what we're saying here is that the U.S. Supreme Court failed the Turing test? Really? Please tell me, at the least, that they are Turing complete.
"Yes, an electronic brain," said Frankie, "a simple one would suffice."
"A simple one!" wailed Arthur.
"Yeah," said Zaphod with a sudden evil grin, "you'd just have to program it to say 'What?' and 'I don't understand.' and 'Where's the tea?' --- who'd know the difference?"
"What?" cried Arthur, backing away still further.
"See what I mean?" said Zaphod and howled with pain because of something that Trillian did at that moment.
"I'd notice the difference," said Arthur.
"No you wouldn't," said Frankie mouse, "you'd be programmed not to."
[Thank you forever D. Adams.]
Scarce, scared, scarred, sacred... -Col. Bruce Hampton
Courts of original jurisdiction are bound by the law. Appellate courts, up to and including the Supreme Court, are not bound by a law they have not previously addressed. On the contrary, the law within an appellate court's jurisdiction is bound by the decision of the court issuing it.
Where does the law state that judges are supposed to separate their own bias on the one hand from the facts at hand, legislation, etcetera on the other?
As early as the late nineteenth century, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was arguing that the law was nothing other than a prediction of how judges will rule and that legislation was nothing more than one input among others to what law is.
The idea that judges should exercise judicial restraint only follows from a specific ideology and its particular understanding of what law is. It has no foundation in legislation or in the US Constitution. The best legal foundation for that principle is the idea of common law which, in the present day, is disputable as a significant input to the law.
Now, not all legal ideologies are extreme as the legal realism of Holmes. But few entertain the idea that judges are necessarily bound by judicial restraint. The closest you'll find to something of that sort is the ideology of legal positivists like Joseph Raz and HLA Hart that hypothesize something along the lines of a "rule of recognition" and observe that judges ought to be somewhat conservative in order that the masses will continue to see the law as valid and binding.
"The problem is that the Constitution doesn't actually tell you the answer in 99% of cases."
Nonsense.
"It doesn't say anything specifically about GPS tracking devices."
It doesn't need to. In what way would you say that tracking someone 24 hours a day, without their consent or a warrant, is "reasonable"? The fact is that it isn't reasonable. Tracking someone in this manner is NOT the same as just observing them. As one attorney put it, this kind of tracking allows police to infer all kinds of things about a citizen that are simply none of their business, such as who you do business with, who your girlfriend is, who you associate with politically, and so on.
Such tracking is, in fact, a rather outrageous intrusion into someone's private life. There is nothing at all reasonable about it.
In what respect do you think Libertarians don't want a strict constitutionalist? I am just curious.
Forgive me, but I'm a touch incredulous at that statement.
Not my recollection (60s through now) at all, especially the Warren court and the early 70s.
The Warren court was pretty unabashedly activist. Go read up on it. They saw themselves as addressing needed social injustices via court decision. You may agree with what they decided (and many times it was needed badly as the civil rights cases and some of the liability) but that's the very definition of judicial activism.
How do you think they didn't overturn precedent on Brown vs Board of Education and the other cases that were the very core of the victories of the civil rights movement? In Brown, they specifically went against previous decisions (Plessey vs Ferguson) that said segregation was acceptable. In Brown, they said seperate but equal was not.
How was Roe vs Wade not a change from the longstanding tendency to leave medical regulation to the states? Etc, etc, the list is a long one. Look at liability law as well. there was major overruling of standing precedent.
Just because a decision was a good or needed one doesn't bear on whether it was activist or precedent preserving.
What you're saying just doesn't agree with history.
Yes, I'm quite aware of the philosophical differences of judges and that they assume different bases for law.
But look at what actually happens. They often reach the same conclusions regardless.
It's not the only field that happens in. Example: Look at physics. Bohr and Everett disagreed fundamentally on what the nature of quantum reality was. And yet, they would calculate the exact same results.
As the next post points out (mythicalreptile), last term better than half the decisions were unanimous.
Are you really saying that in 82 (cases) trials of flipping 8 coins in each case you'd expect you'd expect all to come up either heads or tails more than 50% of the time? That's what being uncorrelated and no better than chance and yet leading to this result means.
Of course there are going to be correlations. You have human beings with similar backgrounds on the bench. Humans you may not like, but regardless they're going to behave like humans and come to the same conclusions more often than random. If that weren't the tendency, how would we even begin to see the level of agreement and organization we see in any society?
Forgive me, but use your head.
"This can't be reversed!!"
Easy. You just have to know the admin password to the database.
Furthermore, GPS is the direct technological equivalent of going straight to the objective of a search: "Where is this person's vehicle?" "...it's right there!"
That makes the active technology -- that is, a running GPS feeding vehicle location info to the authorities -- exactly the same as a constantly updated, successful search for a citizen's effect -- a vehicle -- and often, their person as well.
Therefore, said GPS based search requires a warrant; a warrant requires probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and a specific description of the place to be searched, and the things to be seized.
No warrant? Un. Fucking. Constitutional.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
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?
Of course it's unreasonable. But is it a search or seizure under the constitution? Cue all the arguments about how they could get the same result by paying a squadron of police $100,000/year each plus benefits to sit in front of your house and follow you around all day and all night whenever you leave.
If the answer was obvious then we wouldn't need the Supreme Court to decide it.
Or let's pick a different example. Suppose I own a printing press or a web server or whatever other means of publication. Can Congress pass a law consistent with the First Amendment prohibiting me from writing and publishing an article about what a jackass Joe Biden is? Of course not.
But what about if I write the article but somebody else has the printing press, and they agree with my article so they agree to publish it for free? Still no? Now what happens if I write the article, the person with the printing press will publish it if they get paid, and someone who agrees with my article is willing to pay them? If you say no then you strike down campaign finance laws. Money is speech. If you say yes then Congress can prohibit your article from being published just because you can't personally afford to pay for it. No money is no speech.
Tell me there is no room for reasonable people to differ on that.
I'm not sure about the Libertarian Party, which despite the name is not strictly libertarian, but libertarians place the Non-Aggression Principle above all other laws as a matter of principle. A strict constitutionalist policy would be a step in the right direction, but not sufficient on its own. While government authorized by the U.S. Constitution is a lot closer to following the N.A.P. than the government actually in power today, it's still allowed, and sometime required, to practice aggression in the form of levying taxes, fighting non-defensive wars, and enforcing regulations (as opposed to natural rights) through fines, imprisonment, and other forms of coercion. As such, any libertarian support must be relative to the even worse system we have, not unconditionally in favor of strict constitutionalism.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
A libertarian would support things like abolishing a standing military in favor of a guard-based military. Libertarians want to be able to project force to places where those there would be unable to exert force against us (Libertarian, but no libertarian). Abolish the military, and the budget is just about balanced in one day. But no, we need to have piles of nukes and a military capable of invading any country on the planet. Not that I'm directly addressing the constitutional issue, but for that, there will be arguments about what a "true" Libertarian is. Those I've dealt with (including party-endorsed candidates) are more like bitter and mean conservatives than libertarians, and they are happy to have big-brother laws on the federal level, so long as it's in line with their personal opinions (like laws banning abortion on a federal level, or meddling with stem cell research).
Learn to love Alaska
You do realize that most political scientists write about countries other than the one they live in, right? And that usually this is analyzing/criticizing/predicting something about that country. Hell, I'm writing on Iraq and Afghanistan myself.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
"Gentlemen, let us compute!" --Leibniz
"Of course it's unreasonable. But is it a search or seizure under the constitution?"
No, it's not. Plain and simple. Because "unreasonable" searches and seizures are unconstitutional. It says so in so many words.
"If the answer was obvious then we wouldn't need the Supreme Court to decide it."
That doesn't follow at all. How many courts have you seen lately making "reasonable" decisions? Agreeing with the common citizen, as opposed to commercial interests?
"Those I've dealt with (including party-endorsed candidates) are more like bitter and mean conservatives than libertarians, and they are happy to have big-brother laws on the federal level, so long as it's in line with their personal opinions (like laws banning abortion on a federal level, or meddling with stem cell research)."
I realize this is not Wikipedia, but I am tempted to say [Citation Needed]. I have been involved with Libertarians for many years, and have met candidates (including the late Harry Browne), and I don't know a single one who believes the way you claim they do.
Non-defensive wars, "big-brother" laws, abortion laws (any abortion laws, pro or con, at the federal level) are all against official Libertarian party principles. Which are publicly available, by the way; just go visit lp.org. The official party platform is right there online.
Like the Republicans pretending to be Tea-Partiers, there are lots of conservatives pretending to be Libertarian, too. That doesn't mean they really are. I can see conservatives believing in the things you say, but I repeat, I don't know of a single Libertarian who does, and I know a lot of them.
I'd love the staff forever if they re-parented your reply above the first post... just this once.
Non-defensive wars, "big-brother" laws, abortion laws (any abortion laws, pro or con, at the federal level) are all against official Libertarian party principles. Which are publicly available, by the way; just go visit lp.org. The official party platform is right there online.
That's my issue with the LP. I've seen LP members run for national office who ran on the personal platform that they would make abortion illegal. When the candidates don't follow the platform, what's the point of a party? Same goes for LP stance on war. The stance on non-defensive wars doesn't match with funding indications from LP candidates who won't make it priority one to stop the massive waste on military. Why run on "fringe" things, rather than just focusing on "we'll balance the budget in 2 years, and pay off the debt in 15 years" Instead, we get "we'll cut welfare (focusing on welfare for the poor first, and the corporate welfare eventually), and we'll cut the massive waste on stuff like regulations on banks and publicly traded companies" It's like the LP loves shooting itself in the foot. The anti-poor party will never get enough support to be relevant.
I can see conservatives believing in the things you say, but I repeat, I don't know of a single Libertarian who does, and I know a lot of them.
Hmmm, go meet some LP members in Texas and Alaska (the two places I lived) and tell me what you think of them. All I ever saw was Republicans who wanted to smoke weed. The teabaggers started in Alaska (Palin and such, depending on how you like to believe the roots), I've met a number of the first members, and they are all anti-freedom Christians wanting to push their religion on everyone else (And not just the religion itself, but all the tenets they believe in, such as the gay hating). What the teabaggers claim they believe in isn't that bad, but they aren't what they say they are.
Learn to love Alaska
The problem is that the Constitution doesn't actually tell you the answer in 99% of cases.
Nor is it supposed to. It is merely an agreed-upon basis for resolving questions like your GPS example. It isn't an answer key.
My point was just that there's going to be a huge difference both in outcome and in reasoning if you had 9 people whose job it was to decide whether shit was fair versus having the same 9 people decide the same cases based entirely on what the Constitution says. There's still a lot of interpretation and reasoning going on, but it's a lot less arbitrary.
"I've seen LP members run for national office who ran on the personal platform that they would make abortion illegal."
I have a hard time believing the Libertarian Party would support such a candidate. Are you sure he/she was a member of the national Libertarian Party? Maybe that person was only a member of a state branch (which are separate)?
"he stance on non-defensive wars doesn't match with funding indications from LP candidates who won't make it priority one to stop the massive waste on military. " Again, I would like to see a concrete example of this. "Some LP candidates" isn't a very convincing argument.
"Hmmm, go meet some LP members in Texas and Alaska (the two places I lived) and tell me what you think of them."
Well, there's one very good example of a Libertarian candidate (who has been running under the Republican banner, though): Texas Congressman Ron Paul. Who has been sending a strong Libertarian message at the national level for over 30 years. A long-time Libertarian, by his own admission he's only a Republican because he doesn't think that third parties can easily get elected in the current political atmosphere.
His positions? Among other things: no non-defensive wars, no Federal abortion laws, no "big-brother" laws... all the things we've been talking about.
Well, there's one very good example of a Libertarian candidate (who has been running under the Republican banner, though)
Yup, nobody reputable will run under the LP banner, so all you can do is point to non-LP people as shining examples of the LP. That seems to prove you wrong, rather than right. "libertarian" principals don't line up with the LP, from what I've seen, and your proof against that is to say "But there is a good libertarian, he just refuses to associate with the LP." as if that's a rebuttal, rather than confirmation of my statements, which is how I take it.
Learn to love Alaska
"Yup, nobody reputable will run under the LP banner, so all you can do is point to non-LP people as shining examples of the LP. That seems to prove you wrong, rather than right."
On the contrary. The fact that Americans have been loathe to support a third party (not to mention the bias against third parties that has been built-in to our political system over the years), says absolutely nothing against any particular third party, whether Libertarian, Green, or any other. And in fact Paul has run under "the Libertarian banner" before. He just doesn't see the support for third parties -- ANY third parties -- today that it would take to get elected.
"'libertarian' principals don't line up with the LP, from what I've seen, and your proof against that is to say 'But there is a good libertarian, he just refuses to associate with the LP."
Wrong on both counts. As I clearly stated in my earlier reply, you can go to LP.org and look at their official platform. To say that "libertarian principles don't line up with the LP" is simply false. A bald-faced lie, that anybody who wants to go look can prove to themselves. Why didn't you?
Second, Paul can and does "associate" with the Libertarian party. He was a party member for years and has run as Libertarian before. I repeat: according to his own statements, the only reason he runs as a Republican is because he feels it is too difficult to get elected while running under a third-party system. Largely due to the built-in advantages the 2 big parties have given to themselves over the years.
"as if that's a rebuttal, rather than confirmation of my statements, which is how I take it."
Oh, it's definitely a rebuttal. Nothing you have stated has been confirmed at all. In fact, as I stated twice before, a quick look at the LP party platform, which should take you all of about 30 seconds to find, proves you wrong quite easily.
The only reason I mentioned Paul, is that you brought up Libertarians from Texas. Despite running under the Republican banner, Paul still considers himself -- and calls himself -- a Libertarian. So, since you asked for one, there you have one. One who demonstrates quite clearly that you are wrong.
There are two schools of thought. One, based on "original intent" by the Founding Fathers held that the nation was governed strictly by the plain language of the Constitution which limited the power of the federal government to national security and international relations. All other power and authority was left to the several states and to the people, as they greatly feared the inevitable tyranny of democracy. The legislature was to pass laws only within this specific authority and the judiciary was to determine only if such laws did or did not violate the bounds of that authority. Put simply, this established a free society rather than a governing system that had the power to do things for you but also to do things to you in an manifestly unfree society. This didn't sit well with the political class and their special friends since it left them few ways to dispense privilege (or more accurately corruption) and perpetuate themselves in office, so this second view is that the legislature is free to pass virtually any law (based on the interstate commerce provision when in fact the clear intent of that provision applied only to duties levied between states) and the judiciary is free to make any decision they like on virtually any subject they like based on their political leanings. Worse yet, while we slept the political class created a vast unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy that is allowed to make laws (regulations) and oppress the citizenry completely beyond the consent of the governed. Kings would have liked such powers. Be very afraid; the second option is in control and the tyrannical panderfest is afoot. Few people here and abroad understand that this is the problem with Europe and that we are next. It would be interesting to speculate on how in the computer age we could reform the process to regain our freedom. With the judicial system, forget a Turing test; intelligence is not needed. A fairly simple program could determine if a particular law passed by Congress was in violation of federal authority. Enforcement would be an issue since electric shock to the offending legislators is probably out. I would personally favor cutting them off for the rest of their terms; no more fat paychecks and nobility style perks. That should get their attention since at present most of them have no idea what their Constitutional authority is, or consider it relevant and violate their Oath of Office with impunity.