Committee Decisions and Mathematical Statistics

Abstract

DR. BLAKESLEE is surprised that there is not a higher degree of unanimity of the Supreme Court of the United States¹, but a believer in the subjectivity of opinion would expect very much what Dr. Blakeslee records in the tantalizingly few data he gives. In some matters there can scarcely be two opinions. But the ordinary matters of government are commonly settled by committee decisions-of which those of the Supreme Court are a type-or else by the decision of some one man. If the values of the opinions of men inter pares are equal, one would premise first, that a wrong decision is equally as likely to emerge as a right one from subjective processes ; and secondly, in relation to complex and obscure questions such as those with which superior courts necessarily deal, that the voting would correspond to some distribution of mathematical probability. Some critiques of examination results (“examinations of examiners”) support these views². It would be interesting to know how often a decision of a lower court of law is reversed or upheld by a higher.