Behavioral Patterns of Individual Judges in the UK Supreme Court

Very often judging is viewed as a collective endeavour, with the the decision of ‘the court’ as a whole forming the basis of the law. Equally as important, however, are the contributions of each judge acting as an individual unit. This paper seeks to examine to what extent ‘individuality’ comes through in the UK context by trying to measure judicial behavior (in terms of both case outcomes as well as reasoning) on the UK Supreme Court, using a ten-year dataset of all cases handed down from 2009 to 2019. In particular, the paper considers whether or not the judges demonstrate (noteworthy) patterns of individual judicial behavior and how those patterns vary significantly across different areas of law.