Ideological Crossover in Judicial Opinions and Perceived Legitimacy

• In Event: Perceptions on Representatives and Legislative Compromise

Abstract

The concept of judicial legitimacy in the minds of the public has been the subject of deliberation as some scholars have suggested that legitimacy stems from the public’s individual ideological leanings and not from the court’s perceived impartiality in applying the rule of law. Judges are perceived as more legitimate if they make decisions in line with an individual’s own ideological position and vice versa. Judges themselves, however, may vote against their own expected ideological preferences, which some scholars have suggested is an effort to uphold the legitimacy of the court. However, few studies have directly assessed whether judges crossing over from their expected ideological position actually increases perceived legitimacy in the general public. In this paper, we employ an original survey experiment to determine whether ideological crossover impacts the legitimacy of a circuit court in a hypothetical interstate tax case. We manipulate both the degree to which judges deviate from the expected ideological divide and the ideological direction of the position. We find that ideological crossover does significantly impact the legitimacy of the court, above and beyond respondents’ preferred ideological direction in the case outcome. This suggests that when justices join opinions against their ideological positions, it may increase the court’s perceived legitimacy and provide an alternative path to judicial legitimacy among the public.

Authors

• Andre Pierre Audette, Monmouth College

• Mark Brockway, University of Notre Dame

• Christopher L. Weaver, Northeastern State University