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IDEOLOGY ON THE REHNQUIST COURT
Author(s) -
Bowen Terry M.
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
southeastern political review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1747-1346
pISSN - 0730-2177
DOI - 10.1111/j.1747-1346.1995.tb00428.x
Subject(s) - ideology , supreme court , multidimensional scaling , variance (accounting) , dimension (graph theory) , political science , scaling , law , sociology , mathematics , statistics , economics , pure mathematics , geometry , accounting , politics
In this paper, we use multidimensional scaling (MDS) as developed by Kruskal to examine patterns of behavior on the Supreme Court for the five “natural courts” during the period 1986–1994. The data employed in the study are the interagreement scores among the justices compiled by and published in the Harvard Law Review. In general, we find that a one‐dimensional solution performs satisfactorily in capturing the variance in the interagreement matrix. In examining the distribution of scale scores along this underlying dimension, it is evident that the relative positioning of the justices resembles the common sense placement of them along the conventional liberal‐conservative continuum. Thus, MDS appears to be a convenient and useful means of systematically identifying the Court's ideological spectrum from its decision making behavior.