Zoe Robinson is a Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University. With support from the Australian National University’s Futures Scheme, she has created the first Australian High Court Database to provide the necessary data infrastructure for the advancement of empirical legal research in Australia. Prior to joining the Australian National University in 2018, Robinson was a tenured professor of law at DePaul University College of Law in Chicago. Her work on the Australian High Court provides the foundations necessary for robust empirical scholarship, including the generation of ideology scores for High Court justices (with Dr Patrick Leslie and Dr Jill Sheppard), the assessment of partisanship in High Court decision-making (with Professor Russell Smyth and Dr Patrick Leslie), and foundational analysis of the impact of oral argument on case outcomes in the High Court (with Professor Tonja Jacobi and Dr Patrick Leslie). Robinson also writes in the area of US constitutional law, specifically relating to constitutional rights, criminal justice, and religious liberty. Her work has appeared in journals including the Cornell Law Review, the Minnesota Law Review, the Iowa Law Review, the Boston College Law Review, the American Journal of Comparative Law, and the George Washington Law Review. Robinson holds a JSD and JD (High Honors) from the University of Chicago Law School, an LLB (First Class Honours) and a BA from the Australian National University, and a BMus from the Queensland Conservatorium.

Dr Pat Leslie is postdoctoral research fellow at the School of Politics and International Relations at The Australian National University. His work focuses on politics and representation within the Australian Parliament, Australian High Court and British House of Commons. His work has appeared in the Journal of Law and Courts, UNSW Law Review, the American Journal of Comparative Law, and the American Political Science Review, among others.

The Australian National University has made this project possible through its award of the ANU Futures Scheme to Professor Robinson. Without the financial support of the ANU Futures Scheme, this database would not be available.

This project would not have been possible without the efforts of numerous research assistants who variously sourced, coded, and cross-checked information. We thank Jonathan Tjandra, Edmund Handby, Andrew Ray, Benjamin Durkin, Matthew Putt, Indira Wrigley, Shreeya Smith, Rose Rodrieguez, and Julia Rheinburger.

We would like to extend a special thanks to James Daily of the Washington University in St. Louis Center for Empirical Research in the Law and Lee Epstein of the University of Southern California for their invaluable technical assistance.