The American public's attitudes over how judges use legal principles to make decisions

Abstract

We investigate the American public's attitudes over an integral component of judicial behavior: the legal principles judges employ when making decisions. Our theoretical perspective argues that political preferences shape individuals’ attitudes over how judges apply legal principles, mirroring ideological divisions expressed by political elites and judges. Using an original battery of questions, we find high support across all Americans for the use of certain, well-established legal principles, but stark differences in how liberals and conservatives evaluate the use of more controversial principles. In a survey experiment, we find that agreement (disagreement) between an individual's attitudes over the use of legal principles and the reasoning contained in a Supreme Court opinion is associated with increased (decreased) support for the Court decision.