Quantitative Analysis of Judicial Processes: Some Practical and Theoretical Applications

A recent example of a nonquantitative and nonreplicable predictive technique can be found in Fred Rodell's discussion of Baker v. Carr, For Every Justice, Judicial Deference is a Sometime Thing, 5o GEo.L. J. 70o (1962).Apparently believing that judicial votes are more accurately predictable in terms of the personal predilections of the judges than on the basis of impersonal, or objective, reasoned rules, Rodell predicted a 5-4 Supreme Court vote in Baker v. Carr eleven days before the Supreme Court dccision.Moreover, he identified the Justices he expected to find on each side and predicted that the Court would "order the requested redistricting."Id. at 707.While the Court took action likely to promote redistricting, it did not "order redistricting," as Justice Stewart makes clear in his concurring opinion.Rodell correctly predicted seven of the eight votes cast-an impressive result indeed.But in a larger perspective, it may be meaningless.For who knows how Rodell reached his result?Can any lawyer replicate Rodell's experiment and results?The important question is not whether one can predict judicial votes in one case by intuition or sheer guess, or through personal contact with judges or their clerks, but what replicable procedures are significantly successful over a long run of cases.If Rodell has discovered any successful predictive device based on "human factors," he has yet to make it available to the profession at large.'Materials on quantitative methods in the social sciences are abundant.Especially useful are