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license: cc-by-nc-3.0
task_categories:
- tabular-classification
- tabular-regression
tags:
- supreme-court
- courts
- judicial-politics
- scdb
- law
- duckdb
- datapond
pretty_name: The Supreme Court Database (SCDB), 1791-present, case- and justice-level with the code book
size_categories:
- 100K<n<1M
---
# Supreme Court Database (SCDB)
Every U.S. Supreme Court decision 1791-present from Washington University's Supreme Court
Database: the modern (1946-, release 2026_01) and Legacy (1791-1945) databases at the case
and justice level, all four units of analysis, plus the complete online code book as a
`codes` table so every integer code decodes in SQL. `v_cases` is pre-decoded.
**677,452 rows across 9 tables.**
| Table | Description | Row Count | Column Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| `justice_votes` | One row per justice per case, 1791-present: the case variables plus the justice's vote, opinion, direction, majority and agreement | 256,469 | 62 |
| `justice_votes_vote` | Justice-level rows of cases_vote (1946-present) | 126,237 | 62 |
| `justice_votes_legal_provision` | Justice-level rows of cases_legal_provision (1946-present) | 125,571 | 62 |
| `justice_votes_docket` | Justice-level rows of cases_docket (1946-present) | 97,918 | 62 |
| `cases` | One row per Supreme Court case by citation, 1791-present (modern 1946+ release 2026_01 plus the Legacy database): dates, citations, parties, origin, issue, decision direction, disposition, vote counts, opinion writer | 29,270 | 54 |
| `cases_vote` | Modern cases split one row per issue/vote split (1946-present) | 14,090 | 54 |
| `cases_legal_provision` | Modern cases split one row per legal provision considered (1946-present) | 14,016 | 54 |
| `cases_docket` | Modern cases split one row per docket number consolidated in the decision (1946-present) | 10,932 | 54 |
| `codes` | SCDB online code book: the label for every coded value (variable, code, label; justices carry their service dates in extra) | 2,949 | 4 |
## Query it remotely
```sql
INSTALL httpfs; LOAD httpfs;
ATTACH 'https://huggingface.co/datasets/Nason/scdb-database/resolve/main/scdb.duckdb' AS scdb (READ_ONLY);
SELECT term, decision_direction, COUNT(*) AS n
FROM scdb.v_cases WHERE term >= 2015 GROUP BY 1, 2 ORDER BY 1, 2;
```
Or with the datapond packages: `pip install datapond` / `pak::pak("datapond-db/datapond-r")`.
Build pipeline and caveats: https://github.com/ian-nason/scdb-database
Source: http://scdb.wustl.edu (Spaeth, Epstein et al.; CC BY-NC 3.0 - cite the SCDB).
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