Dion Farganis, an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, has had an article published in Political Research Quarterly.
“Do Reasons Matter? The Impact of Opinion Content on Supreme Court Legitimacy” looks at whether public attitudes about the Court are affected by the kinds of arguments that the justices use in their rulings. Farganis conducted an experiment using a new technique: realistic, mock Supreme Court decisions to see how people reacted to controversial decisions.
He found that even when the justices use very controversial reasoning, support for the Court remains higher than for other branches of government.
“Is Supreme Court legitimacy affected by the way justices explain their decisions to the public? Existing work shows a link between legitimacy and case outcomes but often overlooks the impact of opinion content. Using a novel experimental design, the author measures the effect of three different types of judicial arguments on public support for the Court. The results suggest that the rationales used by justices in their opinions can affect institutional legitimacy, but to a lesser degree than conventional wisdom suggests. Taken together with other recent legitimacy research, these findings have important implications and set the stage for follow-up research.”