Twitter Style in Court: The Effect of Twitter Use Opinion Readability

• In Event: Court Opinion Language and Influence

Abstract

We know that judges communicate with different audiences using different styles (Baum 2009; Black et al 2016; Curry and Fix 2019; Romano and Curry 2019). However, we know little about the interdependence of different judicial communication styles. This paper offers a starting point for exploring this question. In the paper, we ask whether the adoption of new methods of communicating directly with the mass public has a systemic influence on the formal writing of judges. Specifically, we are interested in whether the growing use of Twitter by state high court judges to communicate directly with their constituents leads to the adoption of a more accessible style of writing in their formal opinions. To address this question, we develop a novel theoretical framework explaining how the adoption of Twitter by state court judges can influence the language used in their opinions. Judges that use Twitter tend to be from state that retain judges through some form of popular elections (Curry and Fix 2019), and they use Twitter to reach a broader audience of their constituents. We argue that as Twitter using judges become more accustom to writing in a more accessible style due to the combination of Twitter's character count limits and the audience they aim to reach with their tweets, they will in turn see the overall value of of a clear and readable writing style. It seems logical that this behavioral change will lead these judges to adopt a more accessible writing style in their opinions as well. To test our theory, we will use two approaches. The first will directly test the influence of Twitter use on individual judges’ writing styles. To do this we will compare the readability of opinions issued by a set of judges before and after those judges joined Twitter. This approach will allow us to test whether the adoption of Twitter had a direct and measurable influence on how these judges write their opinions. The second approach is more indirect. Here we will examine differences between Twitter using and non-Twitter using judges. We will carry out this analysis in two steps. First, we will use a set of covariates known to influence the readability of judges' writing to create a matched set of Twitter using and non-Twitter using judges. Then, we will compare the readability of opinions written by judges in each of these sets to see if the Twitter using judges write more readable opinions that their non-Twitter using counterparts.

Authors

• Todd A. Curry, University of Texas at El Paso

• Bailey Rose-Marie Fairbanks, University of Central Arkansas

• Michael P. Fix, Georgia State University

• Michael K. Romano, Shenandoah University