Empirical Legal Research: Data Sources & Repositories

Contains over two hundred pieces of information about each case decided by the Court between the 1791 and 2016 terms. Examples include the identity of the court whose decision the Supreme Court reviewed, the parties to the suit, the legal provisions considered in the case, and the votes of the Justices.

A multi-user, public database containing a wealth of information on individuals nominated (whether confirmed or not) to the U.S. Supreme Court (John Jay-Neil M. Gorsuch). Houses 266 variables, falling roughly into five categories: identifiers, background characteristics and personal attributes, nomination and confirmation, service on the Court, and departures from the bench.

The IDB contains data on civil case and criminal defendant filings and terminations in the district courts, along with bankruptcy court and appellate court case information.

Information related to the work of the U.S. courts. Data appear in detailed statistical tables and charts, and many reports offer analyses of key data.

The Appeals Courts Database Project was designed to create an extensive dataset to facilitate the empirical analysis of the votes of judges and the decisions of the U.S. Courts of Appeals.

The directory includes the biographies of judges presidentially appointed to serve during good behavior since 1789 on the U.S. district courts, U.S. courts of appeals, Supreme Court of the United States, and U.S. Court of International Trade, as well as the former U.S. circuit courts, Court of Claims, U.S. Customs Court, and U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals

Contains information on nominations to Article III district and circuit courts from the beginning of 1977 through the end of December 2004.

The Court Statistics Project (CSP) publishes caseload data from the courts of the fifty states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. States publish their own data that may be more extensive, although not directly comparable to other states for a variety of reasons, including differences in court structure, case definitions and counting practices, court rules, statutes, or terminology.

Database containing information on State Supreme Court decisions in all fifty states during their 1995 through 1998 sessions. This archive contains 21,000 decisions reached by over 400 state supreme court justices seated during those years. Also has biographical data from published sources for all justices sitting in 1995 through 1998. Researchers may link the decisional and biographical date with measures of institutional structure and state contextual influences to perform rigorous comparative analyses of state supreme courts.

Database on the personal, social, economic, career and political attributes of judges who served on the United States Courts of Appeals from 1801 to 1994. The Appeals Court Attribute dataset contains information on judges who served from 1801-2000 (and partial information on judges through 2004); and, the District Court Attribute dataset contains information on judges who served from 1789-2000 (and partial information on judges through 2004).

Contains data for judicial elections for nearly all state courts of last resort, and some general jurisdiction state courts.