A Segal–Cover score is an attempt to measure the "perceived qualifications and ideology" of nominees to the United States Supreme Court. The scores are created by analyzing pre-confirmation newspaper editorials regarding the nominations from The New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and The Wall Street Journal. Each nominee receives two scores that range from 0 to 1 based on the average score of all articles from these sources:

  • Qualifications: 0 means unqualified and 1 means extremely qualified
    • Qualification scores are based on the characterization of each editorial as positive, neutral, or negative toward the nominee. Positive articles are coded as 1, neutral articles as 0.5, and negative articles as 0.[1]
  • Ideology: 0 means most conservative, and 1 means most liberal.
    • Ideology scores are based on each editorial's characterization of the nominee as liberal, moderate, conservative, or not applicable. Articles characterizing the nominee as liberal are coded as 1, moderate as .5, conservative as 0; articles deemed not applicable are omitted from the ideology score.[1]

The Segal–Cover scoring was introduced by Jeffrey Segal and Albert Cover (both of Stony Brook University) in their 1989 article "Ideological Values and the Votes of U.S. Supreme Court Justices".[2][3] The scores have been updated by Segal to cover all nominees from Hugo Black in 1937 to Ketanji Brown Jackson in 2023.[4]

Segal and Cover found that the scores are strongly correlated with the subsequent votes of the justices. Because the scores are based on perceptions before the nominee takes a seat on the Court, they also provide "reliable measures of the ideological values of Supreme Court justices that are independent of the votes they later cast."[2] In a 1995 paper revisiting the Segal-Cover score, Segal and his coauthors concluded that the ideology score was significantly more accurate for justices who served during and after the Warren Court and cautioned that researchers analyzing the ideology of earlier justices should supplement the ideology scores of earlier judges with other methodologies and that "Scholars should be sensitive to changes in the legal, political, and social environments (which generate the newspaper reactions on which the scores are based) and use appropriate diagnostic tools to tease out their potential effects."[3]

The Segal–Cover perceived qualifications and ideology scores for all nominees to the Court between 1937 and 2018:

Nom.
Order
NomineeChief
Justice
Senate
Vote
Ideology
Score
Qualifications
Score
Nominator (Party)Year
1Hugo Black67 – 180.8750.160Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat)1937
2Stanley F. ReedVoice Vote0.7250.875Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat)1938
3Felix FrankfurterVoice Vote0.6650.965Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat)1939
4William O. Douglas62 – 40.7300.820Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat)1939
5Frank MurphyVoice Vote1.0000.650Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat)1940
6Harlan F. StoneCJVoice Vote0.3001.000Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat)1941
7James F. ByrnesVoice Vote0.3300.800Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat)1941
8Robert H. JacksonVoice Vote1.0000.915Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat)1941
9Wiley B. RutledgeVoice Vote1.0001.000Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat)1943
10Harold H. BurtonVoice Vote0.2800.930Harry S. Truman (Democrat)1945
11Fred M. VinsonCJVoice Vote0.7500.785Harry S. Truman (Democrat)1946
12Tom C. Clark73 – 80.5000.125Harry S. Truman (Democrat)1949
13Sherman Minton48 – 160.7200.355Harry S. Truman (Democrat)1949
14Earl WarrenCJVoice Vote0.7500.855Dwight D. Eisenhower (Republican)1953
15John M. Harlan II71 – 110.8750.750Dwight D. Eisenhower (Republican)1955
16William J. Brennan, Jr.Voice Vote1.0001.000Dwight D. Eisenhower (Republican)1956
17Charles E. WhittakerVoice Vote0.5001.000Dwight D. Eisenhower (Republican)1957
18Potter Stewart70 – 170.7501.000Dwight D. Eisenhower (Republican)1958
19Byron WhiteVoice Vote0.5000.500John F. Kennedy (Democrat)1962
20Arthur J. GoldbergVoice Vote0.7500.915Lyndon B. Johnson (Democrat)1965
21Abe FortasVoice Vote1.0001.000Lyndon B. Johnson (Democrat)1965
22Thurgood Marshall69 – 111.0000.835Lyndon B. Johnson (Democrat)1967
23Abe FortasCJ45 – 43 *0.8450.635Lyndon B. Johnson (Democrat)1968
24Warren E. BurgerCJ74 – 30.1150.960Richard M. Nixon (Republican)1969
25Clement Haynsworth, Jr.45 – 550.1600.335Richard M. Nixon (Republican)1969
26G. Harrold Carswell45 – 510.0400.111Richard M. Nixon (Republican)1969
27Harry A. Blackmun94 – 00.1150.970Richard M. Nixon (Republican)1970
28Lewis F. Powell, Jr.89 – 10.1651.000Richard M. Nixon (Republican)1972
29William Rehnquist68 – 260.0450.885Richard M. Nixon (Republican)1972
30John Paul Stevens98 – 00.2500.960Gerald Ford (Republican)1975
31Sandra Day O'Connor99 – 00.4151.000Ronald Reagan (Republican)1981
32William RehnquistCJ65 – 330.0450.400Ronald Reagan (Republican)1986
33Antonin Scalia98 – 00.0001.000Ronald Reagan (Republican)1986
34Robert H. Bork42 – 580.0950.790Ronald Reagan (Republican)1987
35Douglas GinsburgWithdrawn0.0000.320Ronald Reagan (Republican)1987
36Anthony Kennedy97 – 00.3650.890Ronald Reagan (Republican)1988
37David Souter90 – 90.3250.765George H. W. Bush (Republican)1990
38Clarence Thomas52 – 480.1600.415George H. W. Bush (Republican)1991
39Ruth Bader Ginsburg96 – 30.6801.000Bill Clinton (Democrat)1993
40Stephen G. Breyer87 – 90.4750.545Bill Clinton (Democrat)1994
41John G. RobertsCJ78 – 220.1200.970George W. Bush (Republican)2005
42Harriet E. MiersWithdrawn0.2700.360George W. Bush (Republican)2005
43Samuel Alito58 – 420.1000.810George W. Bush (Republican)2006
44Sonia Sotomayor68 – 310.7800.810Barack Obama (Democrat)2009
45Elena Kagan63 – 370.7300.730Barack Obama (Democrat)2010
46Merrick GarlandLapsed0.7301.000Barack Obama (Democrat)2016
47Neil Gorsuch54 – 450.1100.930Donald Trump (Republican)2017
48Brett Kavanaugh50 – 480.0700.400Donald Trump (Republican)2018
49Amy Coney Barrett52 – 480.2300.820Donald Trump (Republican)2020
50Ketanji Brown Jackson53– 47 ? ?Joe Biden (Democrat)2022

* The vote on Fortas for the Chief Justice position was on cloture and failed to receive the necessary two-thirds majority.

  • A highlighted row indicates that the Justice is currently serving on the Court.
  • A Senate vote in red text indicates that the nomination was blocked.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Riley, Chad (2015). Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Arlington in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (PhD). The University of Texas at Arlington.
  2. 1 2 Segal, Jeffrey A.; Cover, Albert D. (June 1989). "Ideological Values and the Votes of U.S. Supreme Court Justices". The American Political Science Review. 83 (2): 557–565. doi:10.2307/1962405. JSTOR 1962405.
  3. 1 2 Segal, Jeffrey A.; Epstein, Lee; Cameron, Charles M.; Spaeth, Harold J. (August 1995). "Ideological Values and the Votes of U.S. Supreme Court Justices Revisited". The Journal of Politics. 57 (3): 812–823. doi:10.2307/2960194. JSTOR 2960194. S2CID 145385646.
  4. Epstein, Lee; Walker, Thomas G.; Staudt, Nancy; Hendrickson, Scott; Roberts, Jason (October 2022). "The U.S. Supreme Court Justices Database". Retrieved April 9, 2023.
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