Predicting Supreme Court Cases Probabilistically: The Search and Seizure Cases, 1962-1981

TLDR

Fourth Amendment scholars regard the Supreme Court’s search and seizure jurisprudence as chaotic. The article contends that the perceived confusion results from how the cases were studied, not from the Court’s decisions. A probit‑based legal model incorporating prior justification, intrusion type, and mitigating factors was used to explain the Court’s reasonableness rulings. The model shows that search and seizure cases are more orderly than previously thought, with estimates matching expectations, the Court favoring federal over state interests, and the model providing both predictive and explanatory value.

Abstract

The overwhelming concensus of Fourth Amendment scholars is that the Supreme Court's sea and seizure cases are a mess. This article proposes that the confusion arises from the manner in which the cases were studied, not from the decisions themselves. A legal model with variables that me the prior justification of the search, the nature of the intrusion, and a few mitigating circumstance used to explain the Court's decisions on the reasonableness of a given search or seizure. The parameters are estimated through probit. The results show that the search and seizure cases are much more ordered than had commonly been believed. Virtually all of the estimates are as expected. Additionally, the Court is shown to act favorably toward the federal government than toward the states. Preliminary analysis suggests the model has predictive as well as explanatory value.