Supreme Court Dataset: Cert Denied Cases

Cases denied certiorari by the Supreme Court

The Policy Agendas Project is in the process of collecting and coding a sample of Supreme Court cases denied certiorari. The agenda-setting literature has consistently shown that the exclusion of issues may be as important as the inclusion of them and this dataset, when complete, will further our understanding of the entire policy agenda of the Supreme Court.

Dataset Description

Using the Policy Agendas’ topics coding scheme, a sample of approximately every twentieth case denied certiorari between 1947 and 1962 was coded. A sub-section of these cases were discarded because little or no information on the policy content of the case was available. If a case was discarded, the case brought before the court directly prior was used.

The cases, date of the decision, and lower court docket number were drawn from U.S. Reports, volumes 333 through 368. The collection of case descriptions followed the procedure for the main Supreme Court dataset (see codebook).

Download Dataset: (.xls)

While this dataset is still in the early stages, below you may download the preliminary findings summarized by two undergraduate fellows, Lianna Hall and Anthony Ching. Check back soon for the full dataset!

The Unseen Agenda: The Supreme Court and Cert Denied Cases (.ppt)

Written by:

Lianna Hall, CAPP Undergraduate Fellow
Anthony Ching, CAPP Undergraduate Fellow
Ashley Watson, CAPP Graduate Assistant