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The Ideological Continuum of the Supreme Court

This ideological continuum of the Supreme Court is a great exercise in visualizing historical data. As Information Aesthetics explains,...

Patrick James
By Patrick JamesJun 20, 2009
Patrick James
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This ideological continuum of the Supreme Court is a great exercise in visualizing historical data.As Information Aesthetics explains, "the ideological data points for each Associate Judge and Chief Justice are calculated per year, and based on Martin-Quinn scores, developed by political scientists Andrew Martin (Washington University) and Kevin Quinn (Harvard University)," so you can literally see, through their decisions over time, which justices were on what side of the political spectrum.Just glancing at the chart as a whole reveals a recent history of mostly conservative or moderate decision-makers. Also, while I think we all probably knew this, it's interesting to see that we haven't had a predominately liberal Chief Justice since Earl Warren in 1968.
elections and politics

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