Visualizing the First Amendment

Debbie Rabina & Chris SulaPratt SILS, ASIST Speakeasy series

April 8, 2013

• “Congress Shall Make No Law Respecting an Establishment of Religion, or Prohibiting the Free Exercise Thereof; or Abridging the Freedom of Speech, or of the Press; or the Right of the People Peaceably to Assemble, and To Petition the Government for a Redress of Grievances.”

First Amendment scholarship

• One of the most studied area of constitutional law

• Legal studies are traditionally based on detailed qualitative analysis of legislation and case law

Our project

• Applies empirical methods and visualization techniques to gain new insights of trends and patterns regarding 1st Amd. ruling by the Supreme Court

• Project goals– Provide a visual history of the First Amendment– Assess the impact of these events on the

freedoms protected by the First Amendment.

Questions

• Once done, we will be able to answer question like:– Which of the 1st Amd. rights were addressed in a

particular case– How did a particular Justice vote– What was the ‘test” (justification) for the ruling

Patterns

• With the hope of being able to reveal patterns such as:• Do judges vote along party lines• Do Justices change their views over time

Phases

• Collecting and analyzing data • conducting analysis • presenting results in a visual graphic interface • publishing research study

Data collection

• Case law from the First Amendment Center timeline

• Identify variables:– Right asserted/denied – Votes by court– Writer of majority/minority opinions– Chief Justice/nominating president – Legal provision– Number of subsequent citation the case received

Data sources

• First Amendment Center timeline– 103 cases with narrative descriptions

• Supreme Court Database– maintained by Washington University, St. Louis– 8,407 cases coded with nearly 40 variables– 655 classified as First Amendment cases

• Supreme Court Citation Network Data– James H. Fowler (UCSD) and Sangick Jeon (Stanford)– 202,167 citations to/from majority opinions

Data sources coverage

Supreme Court Database

Supreme Court Citation Network Data

First Amendment Center Timeline

1754 1800 1900 20001946