About:

Judicial BioStats traces to a 2019 conference at the European Institute University hosted by Daniel Naurin and Urška Šadl. At the conference, participants expressed interest in an expert-sourced dataset that would consist of information on the personal characteristics of apex judges worldwide.



Aspirations:

This website is a prototype, designed to generate discussion among conference participants. Topics/questions of interest (at least to us) are:

  • Developing a common set of variables of interest (while guarding against data overexuberance)
  • Encouraging experts to share their data
  • Deciding what on-line analysis tools are most useful
  • Keeping the datasets up to date
  • Developing funding sources
  • Linking to case-based data


People:

Lee Epstein

Principal Investigator

Lee Epstein is the Ethan A.H. Shepley Distinguished University Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research and teaching interests center on law and legal institutions, especially the behavior of judges.

James Daily

Data Science

James Daily is a researcher with the Washington University in St. Louis Center for Empirical Research in the Law and Head of Legal Data Science at Brooklyn Investment Group.

Alex Chow

Student Software Developer

Alex Chow helped develop the Judicial Biostats website while a senior undergraduate student at Washington University in St. Louis studying computer science and political science.

Nao Yanase

Student Software Developer

Nao Yanase helped develop the Judicial Biostats website while a senior undergraduate student at Washington University in St. Louis studying computer science.



Sources:

European Union data provided by Stein Arne Brekke, Joshua Fjelstul, Silje Hermansen and Daniel Naurin, from “The CJEU Database Platform: Decisions and Decisions Makers.” (2020)

German data provided by Benjamin G. Engst, Thomas Gschwend, Christoph Hönnige, Caroline E. Wittig from "The Judges of the German Federal Constitutional Court." (2020). Extracted and updated from The Constitutional Court Database, CCDB V20.01 [Jul.]

Israeli Supreme Court data provided by Keren Weinshall, et al.'s Israel Supreme Court Database, at https://iscd.huji.ac.il

U.S. Supreme Court data extracted from Lee Epstein and Tom Walker's U.S. Supreme Justices Database (National Science Foundation, Law and Social Science Program, #0241369), at http://epstein.wustl.edu/research/justicesdata.html (updated with each nomination to the Court)