Segal–Cover_score
A Segal–Cover score is an attempt to measure the "perceived qualifications and ideology" of nominees to the United States Supreme Court. The scores are created by analyzing pre-confirmation newspaper editorials regarding the nominations from The New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and The Wall Street Journal. Each nominee receives two scores that range from 0 to 1 based on the average score of all articles from these sources:
- Qualifications: 0 means unqualified and 1 means extremely qualified
- Qualification scores are based on the characterization of each editorial as positive, neutral, or negative toward the nominee. Positive articles are coded as 1, neutral articles as 0.5, and negative articles as 0.[1]
- Ideology: 0 means most conservative, and 1 means most liberal.
- Ideology scores are based on each editorial's characterization of the nominee as liberal, moderate, conservative, or not applicable. Articles characterizing the nominee as liberal are coded as 1, moderate as .5, conservative as 0; articles deemed not applicable are omitted from the ideology score.[1]
The Segal–Cover scoring was introduced by Jeffrey Segal and Albert Cover (both of Stony Brook University) in their 1989 article "Ideological Values and the Votes of U.S. Supreme Court Justices".[2][3] The scores have since been updated as part of The Supreme Court Justices Database, a project led by USC Gould School of Law Professor Lee Epstein.[4] The updated scores cover all nominees from Hugo Black in 1937 to Amy Coney Barrett in 2022.[4] A score for Kentanji Brown Jackson has not yet been published.
Because the scores are based on perceptions before the nominee takes a seat on the Court, they provide a measure of the ideological values of Supreme Court justices that is independent of the votes they later cast.