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:
The Segal–Cover scoring was introduced by Jeffrey Segal and Albert Cover in their 1989 article "Ideological Values and the Votes of U.S. Supreme Court Justices". The scores have been updated by Segal to cover all nominees from Hugo Black in 1937 to Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.
Segal and Cover found that the scores are strongly correlated with the subsequent votes of the justices. Because the scores are based on perceptions before the nominee takes a seat on the Court, they also provide "reliable measures of the ideological values of Supreme Court justices that are independent of the votes they later cast." In a 1995 paper revisiting the Segal-Cover score, Segal and his coauthors concluded that the ideology score was significantly more accurate for justices who served during and after the Warren Court and cautioned that researchers analyzing the ideology of earlier justices should supplement the ideology scores of earlier judges with other methodologies and that "Scholars should be sensitive to changes in the legal, political, and social environments and use appropriate diagnostic tools to tease out their potential effects."
The Segal–Cover perceived qualifications and ideology scores for all nominees to the Court since 1937:
Nom.
Order		NomineeChief
Justice
Senate
Vote		Ideology
Score		Qualifications
Score		Nominator Year
167 – 180.8750.160Franklin D. Roosevelt 1937
2Voice Vote0.7250.875Franklin D. Roosevelt 1938
3Voice Vote0.6650.965Franklin D. Roosevelt 1939
462 – 40.7300.820Franklin D. Roosevelt 1939
5Voice Vote1.0000.650Franklin D. Roosevelt 1940
6CJVoice Vote0.3001.000Franklin D. Roosevelt 1941
7Voice Vote0.3300.800Franklin D. Roosevelt 1941
8Voice Vote1.0000.915Franklin D. Roosevelt 1941
9Voice Vote1.0001.000Franklin D. Roosevelt 1943
10Voice Vote0.2800.930Harry S. Truman 1945
11CJVoice Vote0.7500.785Harry S. Truman 1946
1273 – 80.5000.125Harry S. Truman 1949
1348 – 160.7200.355Harry S. Truman 1949
14CJVoice Vote0.7500.855Dwight D. Eisenhower 1953
1571 – 110.8750.750Dwight D. Eisenhower 1955
16Voice Vote1.0001.000Dwight D. Eisenhower 1956
17Voice Vote0.5001.000Dwight D. Eisenhower 1957
1870 – 170.7501.000Dwight D. Eisenhower 1958
19Voice Vote0.5000.500John F. Kennedy 1962
20Voice Vote0.7500.915Lyndon B. Johnson 1965
21Voice Vote1.0001.000Lyndon B. Johnson 1965
2269 – 111.0000.835Lyndon B. Johnson 1967
23CJ45 – 43 *0.8450.635Lyndon B. Johnson 1968
24CJ74 – 30.1150.960Richard M. Nixon 1969
2545 – 550.1600.335Richard M. Nixon 1969
2645 – 510.0400.111Richard M. Nixon 1969
2794 – 00.1150.970Richard M. Nixon 1970
2889 – 10.1651.000Richard M. Nixon 1972
2968 – 260.0450.885Richard M. Nixon 1972
3098 – 00.2500.960Gerald Ford 1975
3199 – 00.4151.000Ronald Reagan 1981
32CJ65 – 330.0450.400Ronald Reagan 1986
3398 – 00.0001.000Ronald Reagan 1986
3442 – 580.0950.790Ronald Reagan 1987
35Withdrawn0.0000.320Ronald Reagan 1987
3697 – 00.3650.890Ronald Reagan 1988
3790 – 90.3250.765George H. W. Bush 1990
3852 – 480.1600.415George H. W. Bush 1991
3996 – 30.6801.000Bill Clinton 1993
4087 – 90.4750.545Bill Clinton 1994
41CJ78 – 220.1200.970George W. Bush 2005
42Withdrawn0.2700.360George W. Bush 2005
4358 – 420.1000.810George W. Bush 2006
4468 – 310.7800.810Barack Obama 2009
4563 – 370.7300.730Barack Obama 2010
4654 – 450.1100.930Donald Trump 2017
4750 – 480.0700.400Donald Trump 2018

* The vote on Fortas for the Chief Justice position was on cloture and failed to receive the necessary two-thirds majority.