Introduction to the Symposium

Abstract

This issue of the Journal of Law and Courts features articles devoted to measuring the personality traits of US Supreme Court justices. In this brief comment, I attempt to do the following. First, I briefly summarize Hall et al. (2021) and Black et al. (2021). Here I pay special attention to some of the methodological issues that give rise to the disagreement between these authors. Second, I provide some general thoughts on the enterprise of attempting to measure personality traits of US Supreme Court justices. While I am generally skeptical of the utility of such an enterprise, I could be convinced of its value. Accordingly, I attempt to lay out what a skeptic like myself would like to see in order to be convinced of the intellectual value added of work in this area.