The crucial step leading to the embrace of the living Constitution — the determination that the Constitution's
legal categories have no
substantive meaning that can serve to limit the legislative will of the majority — actually happened in the twentieth century.
247 pieces of information for each case, roughly broken down into six
categories: (1) identification variables (e.g., citations and docket numbers); (2) background variables (e.g., how the Court took jurisdiction, origin and source of the case, the reason the Court agreed to decide it); (3) chronological variables (e.g., the date of decision, term of Court, natural court); (4)
substantive variables (e.g.,
legal provisions, issues, direction of decision); (5) outcome variables