Supreme Court Certiorari Study, 1947-1956

This collection provides data on votes cast in conference by 15 Supreme Court justices on petitions to the court for certiorari during the period 1947-1956. The data were collected from the Harold Burton Papers at the Library of Congress. The file contains a complete enumeration of the court's decisions on the petitions to grant or deny plenary review under its certiorari or appellate jurisdiction for the 1951 term and the 1955 term. A one-third sample of cases is included for the other eight terms during the period. For each petition for certiorari, the data file contains (1) the volume, page, and docket number in the SUPREME COURT REPORTER, (2) the court action on the petition, (3) the docket type (appellate or miscellaneous), and (4) the vote made by each of the 15 justices (e.g., grant or deny the petition, absent from voting, or pass). The 15 justices whose votes were collected are Harold Burton, Wiley Rutledge, Robert H. Jackson, Frank Murphy, William O. Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, Stanley Reed, Hugo Black, Fred Vinson, Sherman Minton, Tom Clark, Earl Warren, John Harlan, William J. Brennan, and Charles E. Whittaker.