Jerry Goldman

Political Science Department
Northwestern University

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court ((c) 1993 Jerry Goldman) is a multimedia resource designed to provide novices and experts with information about the Supreme Court, the justices, and the constitutional decisions they render. The Hitchhiker's Guide uses text, images, video, and sound to convey this information.

Figure 1

The Guide is a set of HyperCard stacks offering users background information on all 107 justices (biographies, portraits, decisions, years of service, etc.). Justice information may be accessed through a unique time-driven search engine or by a simple alphabetical list. The justices may be searched through their "seats," traversing the stack via predecessors and successors.

Figure 2

Many of the justices had an impact on constitutional law. The justice cards link to summaries of their significant constitutional opinions.

Figure 3

At the moment, the Guide contains over 700 such summaries. These cases represent all the constitutional opinions found in the leading constitutional law textbooks used in political science and law courses. Each summary (or brief) provides a statement of the facts, the constitutional question presented, the conclusion reached by the Court, and the vote of the justices. It is possible to access case summaries from the justice "cards" and it is possible to access the justice "cards" from the case summaries. The cases are grouped by subject matter, but they can also be viewed chronologically or alphabetically.

Figure 4

I am now working on some enhancements to make the Guide more useful. Each case will be linked to the full text of the Court's opinions. As users delve deeper into the stack, they will come to the actual words and arguments of the justices to illuminate the meaning of the Constitution. I have started to include selections from oral argument in key cases decided in the last 30 years. These sound clips give users a sense of the personalities and issues of constitutional adjudication (see, e.g., Ward v. Rock Against Racism, Griswold v. Connecticut). I have enhanced the justice biographies with video clips of recent confirmation hearings for Justices Thomas and Ginsburg and plan to do do the same for Justices Rehnquist, Scalia, Souter, and Kennedy.

This summer, I added a QuickTime movie of the exterior and interior of the Supreme Court Building. With the cooperation of the Curator's Office, I have made a video of the courtroom and the conference room, as well as other locations inside and outside the building. I shall continue to edit and digitize these images to make the tour user-friendly and comprehensive.

The Guide is built on a baseball metaphor.

Figure 5

Although it is not central to its use, the stack contains something called the "Law-Baseball Quiz." The Quiz originated with the late Robert Cover of Yale Law School. I have extended his vision to a large subset of the justices. The user might well find that "Play ball!" and "May it please the Court" have much in common.

In its full version, The Guide will be distributed on CD-ROM, which is a cheap and stable medium. At the moment, the most likely targets for this work are libraries, departments, and media centers. However, the market for CD-ROM is expanding quickly. This year, there should be 4 million individuals with CD-ROM drives. By 1995, the number should surge to 15 million. Students enrolled in constitutional law (about 75,000 a year) would find The Guide helpful. Faculty would also find it handy for reference purposes and for classroom use.

For more information on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court, contact:

Jerry Goldman
Political Science Department
Northwestern University
Evanston IL 60208
708-491-2637 or 708-491-3525
email: jgoldman@casbah.acns.nwu.edu