Your Web News in One Place

Help Webnuz

Referal links:

Sign up for GreenGeeks web hosting
November 12, 2011 09:05 pm

Predicting US Supreme Court Justice Votes


New submitter Pierre Bezukhov writes "Researchers Roger Guimera and Marta Sales-Pardo of Spain set out to ask whether one of the nine Supreme Court justices could be plucked from the bench and replaced with an algorithm that does not take into account the law or the case at issue, but does take into account the other justices' votes and the court's record. These researchers say their computational models, using methods developed to analyze complex social networks, are just as accurate in predicting a justice's decision as forecasts from legal experts. 'We find that Supreme Court justices are significantly more predictable than one would expect from "ideally independent" justices in "ideal courts,"' that is, free agents independently evaluating cases on their merits, free of ideology, the study said."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/YeamwHzIpHY/predicting-us-supreme-court-justice-votes

Share this article:    Share on Facebook
View Full Article

Slashdot

Slashdot was originally created in September of 1997 by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. Today it is owned by Geeknet, Inc..

More About this Source Visit Slashdot