Computer Scientists Awards

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The U.S. Supreme Court Database, one of the foremost research aids devoted to the nation’s highest court, has found a new home at Penn State.The comprehensive, publicly accessible database, which contains information on every case decided by the Supreme Court from its first decision in 1791 to today, has officially transitioned from its longtime overseer, Washington University in St. Louis (WashU), to the Department of Political Science in Penn State's College of the Liberal Arts. Michael J. Nelson , department head and professor of political science, was asked to serve as a principal investigator on the database by Lee Epstein, Ethan A.H. Shepley Distinguished University Professor at WashU.Since its creation four decades ago, the database has come to be regarded as “the spine for all quantitative scholarship on the Supreme Court,” said Nelson, who will collaborate with the college's McCourtney Institute for Democracy on research, education and outreach