A Segal–Cover score is an attempt to measure the "perceived qualifications and

ideology An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones." Formerly applied pri ...

" of nominees to the

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

. The scores are created by analyzing pre-confirmation newspaper

editorial An editorial, or leading article (UK) or leader (UK) is an article written by the senior editorial people or publisher of a newspaper, magazine, or any other written document, often unsigned. Australian and major United States newspapers, such ...

s regarding the nominations from ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', ''

Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large na ...

'', ''

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...

'', ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...

'', '' St. Louis Post-Dispatch'', and ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

''. Each nominee receives two scores that range from 0 to 1 based on the

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7 ...

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. * 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. The Segal–Cover scoring was introduced by Jeffrey Segal and Albert Cover (both of

Stony Brook University Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public research university in Stony Brook, New York. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is one of the State University of New York system' ...

) in their 1989 article "Ideological Values and the Votes of U.S. Supreme Court Justices". The scores have been updated by Segal to cover all nominees from

Hugo Black Hugo Lafayette Black (February 27, 1886 – September 25, 1971) was an American lawyer, politician, and jurist who served as a U.S. Senator from Alabama from 1927 to 1937 and as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1937 to 1971. ...

in 1937 to

Brett Kavanaugh Brett Michael Kavanaugh ( ; born February 12, 1965) is an American lawyer and jurist serving as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President Donald Trump on July 9, 2018, and has served since O ...

in 2018. 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." 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 The Warren Court was the period in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States during which Earl Warren served as Chief Justice. Warren replaced the deceased Fred M. Vinson as Chief Justice in 1953, and Warren remained in office until ...

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

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Segal-Cover score Supreme Court of the United States Political spectrum Rating

See also

References