Exploring the Effect of Voice Pitch in Lawyer Success at the U.S. Supreme Court

• In Event: Lawyers and External Actors in the Judicial Process

Abstract

The existing literature portrays the justices of the U.S.S Supreme Court as hyperrational, utility-maximizing automatons and constrained only by law and policy. In contrast, the research in mass public and U.S. house elections shows that voters prefer to vote for male candidates with lower-pitched voices. We explore this "deeper-voice" advantage in SCOTUS setting with a in-house Python software that offers automatic pitch analysis. By accessing thousands of oral argument audio recordings during the 1994–2013 terms, we find that  male attorneys with a lower-pitched voice are more likely to win the votes of individual justices, even while controlling for other politically and legally relevant factors. Thus, our research shows that a well-established psychological theory of subconscious reasoning might also apply to the justices -- a quintessential group of judicial elites.

Authors

• Yiqiang Wang

• Siyu Li, University of Minnesota