Janet Box-Steffensmeier
Ohio State University, OH·Social Science
The U.S. Supreme Court receives thousands of petitions each year asking it to review lower court decisions, but grants fewer than one hundred.
- Fields
Social Science
Computer Science
- Topics
U.S. Supreme Court
certiorari
cert petitions
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Build the first comprehensive dataset cataloging the geographic origin, timing and issue areas of all writ of certiorari petitions asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review lower court cases.
- Examine how interest groups and the media shape which petitions the Court grants, and whether its selections match the plurality of interests in society, using computational social science methods.
- Refine machine learning algorithms for legal text analysis of cert petitions and outside actors' filings to classify case features at scale.
- Interview former Supreme Court clerks and amicus-filing organizations to understand how justices sort the large number of petitions they receive each year.
More about the research
These grants of review are called writs of certiorari. This power to choose its cases gives the Court large influence over national policy. The cases it decides are rare and not representative of the petitions it receives. So understanding which issues and interests compete for its attention matters as much as studying its final rulings.
Why it matters
Because the Supreme Court decides so few cases, how it picks them shapes national public policy. A comprehensive public dataset of certiorari petitions, along with evidence on how media and interest groups influence the docket, could give judicial, interest group and media scholars and the public a clearer view of whether the Court's agenda reflects society's range of interests.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
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The school
Ohio State University: 71 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 882 research doctorates a year.
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