PRELUDE TO A GREAT BOOK: A TRAIL-BLAZER IN PUBLIC LAW.

The article presents information on the paper titled "Ten Years of Supreme Court Voting," written by C. Herman Pritchett. Methodologically, Pritchett's work in this period was trail blazing. Social scientist Glendon A. Schubert suggests two main contributions of that work: "First, Pritchett conceptualized the U.S. Supreme Court as a small decision-making group, whose voting and opinion behavior could best be explained in terms of imputed differences in the attitudes of individual justices toward the recurrent issues of public policy that characterize cases that reach the court for decision. Second, Pritchett based his analysis upon quantitative measurement of a large sample of data." Although Pritchett subsequently placed less emphasis on the method of data display employed in the article, it continues to be a major research tool for studying judges' voting. To avoid elaborating the case, "Ten Years of Supreme Court Voting" is representative of the journal "The Southwestern Social Science Quarterly" persistent publication of public law research. At the same time, the article is a pivotal step in developing the behavioral, quantitative approach that has become prominent not only in public law research but in political science in general.