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42 Tex. L. Rev. 1006 (1963-1964)
Applying Correlation Analysis to Case Prediction

handle is hein.journals/tlr42 and id is 1036 raw text is: APPLYING CORRELATION ANALYSIS TO CASE PREDICTION Stuart S. Nagel* Is it possible scientifically to predict the outcome of litigation? Professor Nagel answers in the affirmative. Using the reappor- tionment cases for illustration of his method, Nagel demon- strates that prediction was possible by assigning correlation coefficients to four variables which appear in the cases. Such prediction will be useful to parties in planning litigation, to theoreticians in understanding the judicial process, to legislators in accounting for judicial reactions, and to the public in seeking to comply with the law. I. THE CASES AND Ti VARIABLES About three years ago an article appeared in The American Behavioral Scientist and in The Practical Lawyer entitled Using Simple Calculations to Predict Judicial Decisions.1 Since then the article has been reprinted2 and commented upon$ in various places, but no detailed application has yet been reported of the method- ology presented.4 It is the purpose of this article to present such an application in the hope that others might thereby be stimulated to apply it further. The application involves reapportionment cases although almost any field of law could have been used for illustra- tive purposes. Technical aspects of the methodology have been 'placed in the footnotes so as not to disrupt the continuity of the application to the non-technical oriented reader. From Colegrove v. Green5 through Baker v. Carr,6 there have * Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Illinois; member of the Illinois Bar. 1 Nagel, Using Simple Calculations to Predict Judicial Decisions, 4 AamcAN BE- HAvioRAL SciENTisT 24 (1960), Prac. Law., March 1961, p. 68. 2 LAW IN SocigrY (Schwartz & Skolnick eds. forthcoming); 18 Mo. B.J. 362 (1962). 3Fagan, Some Contributions of Mathematical Reasoning to the Study of Politics, 55 Amt. POL. SCI. Raw. 888, 889 (1961); Lawlor, What Computers Can Do: Analysis and Prediction of Judicial Decisions, 49 A.B.A.J. 337, 341 (1963); Schubert, A Psychometric Model of the Supreme Court, 5 AmERICAN BEHAvioRAL SCIENTIST 14 (1961). 4 In a recent article, however, Ulmer reports without providing the data that ap- plication of Nagel's correlation analysis to . . . 20 facts in . . . 19 cases gave a perfect separation of pro and con cases. Ulmer, Quantitative Analysis of Judicial Processes: Some Practical and Theoretical Applications, 28 LAW & CONTEMP. PROB. 164, 173 (1963). 5 328 U.S. 549 (1946). 6 369 U.S. 186 (1962).

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