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Are Social Background Models Time-Bound?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

S. Sidney Ulmer
S. Sidney Ulmer*
Affiliation:
University of Kentucky
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Abstract

In this research note I seek to determine whether a significantly predicting social background model for analyzing the votes of Supreme Court justices is time-bound. I argue that an affirmative result poses serious questions for past uses of such models, none of which has controlled for the possibility that time is a confounding variable. A model that significantly predicted the votes of the justices in the Court's 1903–1968 terms was constructed. Analysis with this model for two periods—from 1903 to 1935, and from 1936 to 1968—established that the model was not timeneutral. Appropriate theoretical implications are drawn.

Type
Research Notes
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 80 , Issue 3 , September 1986 , pp. 957 - 967
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1986

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