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 (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. 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.
The Segal–Cover perceived qualifications and ideology scores for all nominees to the Court between 1937 and 2022:
| Nom. Order | Nominee ! | Chief Justice | Senate Vote | Ideology Score ! | Qualifications Score | Nominator (Party) ! | Year | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 67 – 18 | 0.875 | 0.160 | Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat) | 1937 | |||
| 2 | Voice Vote | 0.725 | 0.875 | Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat) | 1938 | |||
| 3 | Voice Vote | 0.665 | 0.965 | Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat) | 1939 | |||
| 4 | 62 – 4 | 0.730 | 0.820 | Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat) | 1939 | |||
| 5 | Voice Vote | 1.000 | 0.650 | Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat) | 1940 | |||
| 6 | CJ | Voice Vote | 0.300 | 1.000 | Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat) | 1941 | ||
| 7 | Voice Vote | 0.330 | 0.800 | Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat) | 1941 | |||
| 8 | Voice Vote | 1.000 | 0.915 | Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat) | 1941 | |||
| 9 | Voice Vote | 1.000 | 1.000 | Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat) | 1943 | |||
| 10 | Voice Vote | 0.280 | 0.930 | Harry S. Truman (Democrat) | 1945 | |||
| 11 | CJ | Voice Vote | 0.750 | 0.785 | Harry S. Truman (Democrat) | 1946 | ||
| 12 | 73 – 8 | 0.500 | 0.125 | Harry S. Truman (Democrat) | 1949 | |||
| 13 | 48 – 16 | 0.720 | 0.355 | Harry S. Truman (Democrat) | 1949 | |||
| 14 | CJ | Voice Vote | 0.750 | 0.855 | Dwight D. Eisenhower (Republican) | 1953 | ||
| 15 | 71 – 11 | 0.875 | 0.750 | Dwight D. Eisenhower (Republican) | 1955 | |||
| 16 | Voice Vote | 1.000 | 1.000 | Dwight D. Eisenhower (Republican) | 1956 | |||
| 17 | Voice Vote | 0.500 | 1.000 | Dwight D. Eisenhower (Republican) | 1957 | |||
| 18 | 70 – 17 | 0.750 | 1.000 | Dwight D. Eisenhower (Republican) | 1958 | |||
| 19 | Voice Vote | 0.500 | 0.500 | John F. Kennedy (Democrat) | 1962 | |||
| 20 | Voice Vote | 0.750 | 0.915 | Lyndon B. Johnson (Democrat) | 1965 | |||
| 21 | Voice Vote | 1.000 | 1.000 | Lyndon B. Johnson (Democrat) | 1965 | |||
| 22 | 69 – 11 | 1.000 | 0.835 | Lyndon B. Johnson (Democrat) | 1967 | |||
| 23 | CJ | 45 – 43 * | 0.845 | 0.635 | Lyndon B. Johnson (Democrat) | 1968 | ||
| 24 | CJ | 74 – 3 | 0.115 | 0.960 | Richard M. Nixon (Republican) | 1969 | ||
| 25 | 45 – 55 | 0.160 | 0.335 | Richard M. Nixon (Republican) | 1969 | |||
| 26 | 45 – 51 | 0.040 | 0.111 | Richard M. Nixon (Republican) | 1969 | |||
| 27 | 94 – 0 | 0.115 | 0.970 | Richard M. Nixon (Republican) | 1970 | |||
| 28 | 89 – 1 | 0.165 | 1.000 | Richard M. Nixon (Republican) | 1972 | |||
| 29 | 68 – 26 | 0.045 | 0.885 | Richard M. Nixon (Republican) | 1972 | |||
| 30 | 98 – 0 | 0.250 | 0.960 | Gerald Ford (Republican) | 1975 | |||
| 31 | 99 – 0 | 0.415 | 1.000 | Ronald Reagan (Republican) | 1981 | |||
| 32 | CJ | 65 – 33 | 0.045 | 0.400 | Ronald Reagan (Republican) | 1986 | ||
| 33 | 98 – 0 | 0.000 | 1.000 | Ronald Reagan (Republican) | 1986 | |||
| 34 | 42 – 58 | 0.095 | 0.790 | Ronald Reagan (Republican) | 1987 | |||
| 35 | Withdrawn | 0.000 | 0.320 | Ronald Reagan (Republican) | 1987 | |||
| 36 | 97 – 0 | 0.365 | 0.890 | Ronald Reagan (Republican) | 1988 | |||
| 37 | 90 – 9 | 0.325 | 0.765 | George H. W. Bush (Republican) | 1990 | |||
| 38 | 52 – 48 | 0.160 | 0.415 | George H. W. Bush (Republican) | 1991 | |||
| 39 | 96 – 3 | 0.680 | 1.000 | Bill Clinton (Democrat) | 1993 | |||
| 40 | 87 – 9 | 0.475 | 0.545 | Bill Clinton (Democrat) | 1994 | |||
| 41 | CJ | 78 – 22 | 0.120 | 0.970 | George W. Bush (Republican) | 2005 | ||
| 42 | Withdrawn | 0.270 | 0.360 | George W. Bush (Republican) | 2005 | |||
| 43 | 58 – 42 | 0.100 | 0.810 | George W. Bush (Republican) | 2006 | |||
| 44 | 68 – 31 | 0.780 | 0.810 | Barack Obama (Democrat) | 2009 | |||
| 45 | 63 – 37 | 0.730 | 0.730 | Barack Obama (Democrat) | 2010 | |||
| 46 | Lapsed | 0.730 | 1.000 | Barack Obama (Democrat) | 2016 | |||
| 47 | 54 – 45 | 0.110 | 0.930 | Donald Trump (Republican) | 2017 | |||
| 48 | 50 – 48 | 0.070 | 0.400 | Donald Trump (Republican) | 2018 | |||
| 49 | Amy Coney Barrett | 52 – 48 | 0.230 | 0.820 | Donald Trump (Republican) | 2020 | ||
| 50 | Ketanji Brown Jackson | 53– 47 | ? | ? | Joe Biden (Democrat) | 2022 |
Segal and Cover found that their ideology score is strongly correlated with the subsequent votes of the justices in civil liberties cases, with a correlation of 0.80 and an r² of 0.64.
Segal-Cover scores require subjective assessment of subjective sources. They are not based on any observed voting behavior of judges.[5]
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 . For earlier Court eras Segal et al. (1995) conclude that "scholars should be sensitive to changes in the legal, political, and social environments (which generate the newspaper reactions on which the scores are based) and use appropriate diagnostic tools to tease out their potential effects." They caution that researchers analyzing the ideology of earlier justices should supplement the ideology scores of earlier judges with "other potential determinants of the vote, or redefine their ideological variables to reflect as precisely as possible the issues that their Court addressed."