Category Data and Empirical Tools

Computational Legal Studies (blog), in partnership with the Michigan State University College of Law and Emory Law School, has released (in “Beta Pre-Release”) an intriguing tool to search and map/chart the use of short-phrases in judicial opinions.

The web interface allows a user to instantly view a time series plot for one or several phrases. Comparing the use of legal terms of art over time can be both entertaining and informative.

The current version indexes the language from every decision of the United States Supreme Court from 1791-2005. The announcement on the Computational Legal Studies blog states plans to add other bodies of case law, specifically mentioning the federal Courts of Appeal.

This is one of the recent examples we’ve seen of empirical scholars releasing creative front-end tools for data collected to advance their own scholarship. In this case, the short multi-authored paper “Legal N-Grams? A Simple Approach to Track the ‘Evolution’ of Legal Language” describes the collection of the data and use of the plotting tool, and points the way toward evaluating the data set to explore actual patterns of judicial influence and legal evolution by tracking the adoption of development of legal language.

Katz, Daniel Martin, Bommarito, Michael James, Seaman, Julie, Candeub, Adam and Agichtein, Eugene, “Legal N-Grams? A Simple Approach to Track the ‘Evolution’ of Legal Language” (December 13, 2011). Proceedings of JURIX 2011: The 24th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems, Vienna 2011.
Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1971953

Claremont McKenna College’s Rose Institute has made a database of information about ballot initiatives across the 50 states available online. The data was gathered by Ken Miller (J.D., Ph.D.) of the colleges’ Department of Government.

This is a tool targeted mainly toward Political-Science-style empirical study of initiatives. The web portal to the data can be sorted by state, general subject-matter, ballot number, or year. This is a pretty limited tool for conventional legal research into the contents, meaning, or interpretation of law enacted through the initiative process in a particular jurisdiction. The ability to group by general topic does provide a quick way to know about comparable out-of-state initiatives to research further.

But the site seems really interesting as a tool to study the contours of the initiative process and study the use of state-wide initiatives across time or across states. Most interestingly, the database gathers information on post-election challenges to successful ballot initiatives; providing the court jurisdiction and citation, outcome, and a short summary of the basis for the decision.

The website itself is also interesting as an example of the pros and cons of “off-the-shelf,” cloud-based, web tools. It is built in Zoho Creator, which bills itself as a “non-programmer friendly” tool for building database applications. And it appears this was in fact used as a ‘quick and cheap’ way to get the data out without design or development infrastructure. As for the result, I would deem it clunky but (mostly) functional.

(Site spotted via Due Process: The Georgetown Law Library Blog).

Roughly 75% of the people living in Ohio were born in Ohio, according to the Census Bureau’s November American Community Survey Briefs: “Lifetime Mobility in the United States: 2010.” If we look at the United States as a whole, 59% of the population is living where it was born. About 79% of Louisiana’s population was born there, while only 24% of Nevada’s population was born in the state. Of course, with a population increase of 35%, Nevada has also gained the most in terms of population since 2000, according to the 2010 Census information.

The brief also looks at age and mobility. Those under the age of 5 are the most likely to be living in the state in which they were born (89%), while those ages 65 – 74 are the least likely (47%). Interestingly, however, 65% of the oldest Midwesterners-by-birth are living in the Midwest, but only 25% of the oldest Westerners-by-birth are living in the West.

The American Community Survey (ACS) is a nationwide survey of about 3 million addresses. The purpose is to provide timely social, economic, and demographic data about the nation, states, counties, and other locations.  Other American Community Survey Briefs include, “Labor Force Participation Rate for Selected Age Groups: 2008 and 2009,” “Science and Engineering Degrees: 2009,” and “Same-Sex Couple Households.”

According to a recent PEW report, The Generation Gap and the 2012 Election, generational differences are likely to impact the 2012 elections. The study finds that voters in what they term the “Silent” generation (ages 66 to 83) are strongly in favor of Romney over Obama, while the “Millennial” generation (ages 18-30) strongly favors Obama. The study goes beyond these numbers to look at how the generations view the president, the political parties, entitlements, and other policies. It also explores how the generations have changed.

If asked for your 1st and 2nd choice of best President during your lifetime, would you pick Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan? They were indeed the top two selections for Generation Xers, Boomers, and Silents. The Millennials’ top two choices were Clinton and Obama.

The Report’s Generational Voting History graphic groups voters by who was president when they turned 18, and maps whether they voted more Democratic or more Republican than the overall electorate in each election year from 1994 to 2010. It is interesting that the youngest (those who turned 18 under Bush or Obama and the oldest (those who turned 18 under Roosevelt and are now at least 84) have tended to vote more Democratic than average and have never voted more Republican than average in any particular election year. Voters who turned 18 while Nixon was president voted Republican more than average in 1994, but then gave their support in higher numbers than average to Democrats in 2000, 2002, and 2004. The opposite is true for those who turned 18 under Reagan or the first President Bush, and who are now between 37 and 48. They voted more Democratic than average in 1994, but then gave more support than did the overall electorate to Republicans in 1996, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2006, and 2008.

Is the estimated annual cost to raise a 16-year-old in a two-parent family with one child, living in the Midwest (urban or suburban), who make less than $57,000 (pre-tax). This estimate was provided by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Cost of Raising a Child Calculator. The calculator uses seven categories or expenditures to reach its estimate. For the example 16-year-old, housing was estimated at $3,563, food at $ 2,475, transportation at $1,775, clothing at $888, health care $1,163, child-care/education at $1,413, and “other” at $800.  If the family has two children, 13 and 16, the combined cost for both children is estimated to be $19,170. This is an interesting number to compare to the poverty threshold used by the Census Bureau for a family of two adults and two children—$22,113. See Census Bureau Report of Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance.

The calculator is based on the USDA’s Expenditures on Children by Families, 2010 report. The report notes that the highest expenditure is housing. Not surprising is the fact that as family income rises, so do expenditures on children. However, the percent of income spent on children decreases as income rises. The lower income group (earning less than $57,600 pre-tax) spent 25 percent of their income, while the higher (earning more than $99,730 pre-tax) spent 12 percent.

The August Focus on Prices and Spending put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) discusses the impact of fuel surcharges on the producer price index (PPI). The reports states that higher gas prices affect consumers not only when they buy gas, but also when they pay for goods and services.

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