“IT MAY be simply my educational background”,John Roberts said at the Supreme Court last month, but the reasoning behind the case against gerrymandering seemed to be “sociological gobbledygook (nonsense, indecipherable writing)”. This comment from America’s chief justice, and who holds two degrees from Harvard,had a tinge of false modesty: the mathematics of gerrymandering isn't brain surgery. But justices are often pressed into roles for which law school did not prepare them: historian, scientist and video-game aficionado, or to name a few. It’s no surprise that they sometimes procure the facts unsuitable,as a recent ProPublica study found, or approach to questionable conclusions.
But when it comes to their gravest task—adjudicating capital punishment cases, or where nine people in robes have the last word on whether someone lives or dies at the hand of the government—the justices are sometimes called upon...
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Source: economist.com