The Judicial Common Space (JCS) is a strategy to compare the ideologies of American judges. It was developed to compare the viewpoints of judges in the US Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals.
It is one of the most commonly used measures of judicial ideology.
History
The Judicial Common Space was developed by
Lee Epstein
Lee Epstein is an American political scientist who is currently the University Professor of Law & Political Science and Charles L. and Ramona I. Hilliard Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Southern California.
Career
Universi ...
,
Andrew D. Martin, Jeffrey A. Segal, and Chad Westerland. It developed over a series of conferences and publications from 2005 through 2007, and was based on the
NOMINATE
Nomination is part of the process of selecting a candidate for either election to a public office, or the bestowing of an honor or award. A collection of nominees narrowed from the full list of candidates is a short list.
Political office
In the ...
Common Space score. NOMINATE was developed in 1997 to compare the political ideologies of members of Congress and Presidents. It also integrated
Martin-Quinn scores, developed in 2002 to provide a voting-based ideological comparison of Supreme Court justices.
Method
The Judicial Common Space is based on the finding that a judge's rulings are often similar in ideology to the person who appointed the judge. The JCS factors in the ideology scores of the president, as well as both senators from the judge's home state. If both senators are in the president's party, their scores are averaged. If both senators are from another party, then neither senator's score is used.
The judge is placed on a spectrum of liberal and conservative. A score of "0" indicates no ideological leaning towards either philosophy. A score of -1 is the most liberal ideology, while a score of 1 is the most conservative.
Accuracy
Andrew D. Martin, one of the creators of the JCS as well as the Martin-Quinn score, says that the JCS of circuit court judges is highly correlated to their Martin-Quinn scores after a year on the Supreme Court. This indicates that the JCS is an accurate predictor of ideology.
See also
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Ideological leanings of United States Supreme Court justices
The Supreme Court of the United States is the country's highest federal court. Established pursuant to Article Three of the U.S. Constitution in 1789, it has ultimate, and largely discretionary, appellate jurisdiction over all federal courts ...
*
Segal–Cover score 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 ...
References
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Political science
Federal judiciary of the United States