The Vinson Court Era: The Supreme Court's Conference Votes; Data and Analysis

Abstract

This is an analysis of the US Supreme Court during the tenure of Fred Vinson who served as Chief Justice from 1946 to 1953. During this period, the Court was dominated by such justices as Black, Douglas and Frankfurter, and was sharply divided on several important issues, including the rights of labour unions, communists, religious groups and racial minorities. To a large extent, the history of the Vinson Court is a mirror of US history during the post-war period that encompasses Truman's presidency and the beginning of Eisenhower's. The door to the Court's conferences has always been closed to everyone except to the sitting justices. This book seeks to partially open this door by making the secret conference votes under Fred Vinson available. Here are not only the votes in certain selected or important cases, but 44,681 votes cast by the individual justices in 2501 different cases. The information was gathered from all the surviving collections of the justices' private papers that are located in five separate libraries, from Texas to Massachusetts. The dataset is presented in a format that can be used by scholars to re-examine the assumptions and speculations about the Court's secret deliberations which, until now, could not be systematically tested.