Replication Data for: Cite and Sway? Attorneys, Briefs, and Persuasion at the U.S. Supreme Court

Supreme Court justices complete large amounts of work in short periods of time, and they need attorneys' help to get it done. Attorneys provide that help in merits briefs, where they offer preliminary legal research while also trying to persuade the justices toward their side. One persuasive tactic utilized in briefs is showing specific sitting justices how their past decisions lead them to favor one side over the other. Do attorneys do this and does it work? Using new citation data collected from 2,396 cases presented between the 1984 and 2018 terms, we analyze the frequency with which attorneys mention sitting Supreme Court justices' past decisions explicitly and in passing. We then examine if the attorneys' appeals convince the justices to side with them. Our results suggest that attorneys target ideologically-congruent justices and the median justice, and that doing so significantly increases the likelihood of winning that justice's vote.