As I continue through the data collection phase of my research, I'm taking a moment to reflect on the process which has brought me here. The political environment of America is very different than it was several months ago; yet, in many ways, it is very similar – the underlying power structures which have allowed for the current political moment remain fundamentally unchanged. One of the most contentious of these structures, of course, remains the Supreme Court. While most decisions pass unnoticed, high-profile decisions the Court hands down immediately garner significant media attention. Popular liberal news outlets still lambast decisions from months ago, a rare staying power in a world of instantaneous news and constantly churning trend cycles. In the context of a politicized Court which is largely recognized as such, the relevance of Court decision-making analysis becomes apparent. My research ultimately aims to take aim at the validity of "originalism", tracing its prevalence from 1953 onwards.

My primary challenge that I currently face is the loss of my research mentor due to unexpected circumstances. While my mentor and I were supposed to meet to discuss my project previously, as far back as November of first semester, these meetings ultimately fell through. Thus, I face the loss of my mentor with no prior assistance from them. It may resultantly be more difficult for me to launch and properly utilize the R software on my own. If I find that I am unable to, I will resort to hand-coding more cases for a larger sample size, and utilizing only this data in my study.

When considering the full body of cases which I draw my random sample from, the average vote breakdown is approximately 7:2 (more specifically, 7.045778509:1.954221491). Because of this, not every case has a dissenting opinion – or any minority votes at all. Concurrences are even more rare. I have eschewed dissents and concurrences thus far in the data collection process, and will look at these separately. For now, my collected data looks at majority opinions from 1953 to 1993. Up until the 1980s, there is no mention of any of my identified "originalist" key phrases. While the absence of the term "originalism" itself is not surprising, what is more significant for my data collection is the lack of legal reasoning patterns mimicing originalism. However, without data expanded past the corpus to all cases, definitive data patterns cannot yet be drawn.

As I've continued through the research process, I have found that my interest in my topic has not waned. Once I begin, I find myself completely absorbed in the task at hand. Perhaps unsurprisingly, dealing with difficult data was my least favorite component of research. However, I find the hand coding process to be quite enjoyable. From a first glance, my alternative hypothesis appears to be supported, which excites me as I continue.