{"id":175,"date":"2014-12-08T14:31:29","date_gmt":"2014-12-08T14:31:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/cstarger\/?p=175"},"modified":"2022-06-11T20:15:16","modified_gmt":"2022-06-11T20:15:16","slug":"crawford-line-author-author","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/cstarger\/2014\/12\/08\/crawford-line-author-author\/","title":{"rendered":"Crawford Line: Author! Author!"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the fourth installment in a series of blog posts charting out Confrontation Clause doctrine since 2004’s Crawford v. Washington<\/em>. Last time<\/a>, I deployed a Spaeth visualization to illustrate\u00a0how\u00a0the early doctrinal consensus around Crawford<\/em> has collapsed. Today we introduce individual\u00a0Justices into the picture, graphically illustrating the proposition that the Court’s authority derives from\u00a0its authors.<\/p>\n

\"11_Crawford_majority_only\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The above map depicts the majority opinions in the Crawford<\/em> line with opinion authors noted below the opinions. The Y-axis\u00a0indicates the number of votes each opinion received. Note how counting votes for an opinion<\/span> differs from counting votes for judgment<\/span>. Thus, while\u00a0judgment was unanimous in Crawford<\/em>, the map shows that two justices did not join Justice Scalia’s opinion. More dramatically, though five justices endorsed judgment in 2012’s Williams<\/em> decision, only four justices joined Justice Alito’s plurality opinion. \u00a0This map confirms that Crawford<\/em> doctrine lacks\u00a0consensus.<\/p>\n

Before considering one more\u00a0map, I want to point out\u00a0a potential\u00a0error in this first one. The potential error is with the\u00a0Supreme Court Database (Spaeth) coding. The map represents cases with Spaeth-coded “conservative” outcomes with red triangles; blue-triangles thus represent Spaeth-coded “liberal” outcomes. Now, Spaeth codes the 2008 case Giles v. California<\/em>\u00a0as conservative. I think this is\u00a0an error since\u00a0Giles<\/em>\u00a0rather controversially vacated a pro-state\/anti-defendant outcome. In other words, Giles<\/em>\u00a0was a victory for the criminal defendant, which should qualify as\u00a0“liberal” under\u00a0Spaeth’s rubric<\/a>. \u00a0I have therefore re-coded Giles<\/em>\u00a0— see below:<\/p>\n

\"12.2_Crawford_all_opinions\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The map above displays as individual points the complete set of 23 opinions in the Crawford<\/em> line (7 majority + \u00a010 concurrences + 6 dissents). The number of votes received for all the opinions is again displayed on the Y-axis. Please note, however, that the Y-positions had to be tweaked slightly in two cases with multiple one-vote opinions\u00a0(Giles<\/em> [Thomas, Alito], Bryant<\/em> [Thomas, Scalia, Ginsburg], and Williams<\/em> [Thomas, Breyer]). Finally,\u00a0Justice Alito’s four-vote plurality opinion in\u00a0Williams <\/em>also has its Y-value tweaked to distinguish it from Justice Kagan’s four-vote dissent.<\/p>\n

This complicated picture portrays\u00a0many voices straining to be heard in the constitutional conversation. In the past decade, ten different justices have authored Crawford<\/em>-line opinions. Except for Chief Justice Roberts, every currently sitting justice has stated his or her views at least once. Some have prolifically contributed to the debate. Justice Scalia, for example, has penned a dissent in addition to his four\u00a0majority opinions. This is perhaps unsurprising since Justice Scalia was the prime architect of the early doctrine. More unexpectedly, Justice Thomas has also written \u00a0five opinions, all concurrences. (More on that next time).<\/p>\n

While there’s much to chew on here, there is also work yet to be done. Next time I’ll connect the individual data points above via citations. This will reveal “competing lines” in the doctrine and allow us to better visualize the evolution of Confrontation Clause jurisprudence over the last decade.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: The original version of this post incorrectly stated that Justice Alito’s plurality opinion in Williams garnered three votes. It actually garnered four. The text and map have been changed to reflect this. HT George Fisher.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the fourth installment in a series of blog posts charting out Confrontation Clause doctrine since 2004’s Crawford v. Washington. Last time, I deployed a Spaeth visualization to illustrate\u00a0how\u00a0the early doctrinal consensus around Crawford has collapsed. Today we introduce … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":400,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/cstarger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/cstarger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/cstarger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/cstarger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/400"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/cstarger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/cstarger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":879,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/cstarger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions\/879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/cstarger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/cstarger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/cstarger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}