Do Reasons Matter? The Impact of Opinion Content on Supreme Court Legitimacy

• Date: 01 March 2012
• Published date: 01 March 2012
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912911430667
• Author: Dion Farganis
• Subject Matter: Articles

Political Research Quarterly

65(1) 206 –216

© 2012 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912911430667

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What would have happened if the Supreme Court’s opinion

in Bush v. Gore had been based on polling data instead of

legal arguments? How might the public have reacted to

the decision in Brown v. Board of Education if the justices

had said that integration was “simply the right thing to

do,” rather than relying on constitutional provisions and

case law? Conventional wisdom certainly holds that neither

of these scenarios would have ended well for the Court.

Indeed, commentators have long maintained that there are

certain types of arguments that justices can legitimately use

to defend their rulings and certain types that they cannot

(Bobbitt 1982; Chemerinsky 2002; Marmor 2005; Wells

2007). Written opinions that rely on factors such as consti-

tutional text and precedent are thought to help secure the

Court’s legitimacy; personal beliefs, p olitica l ideo logy,

and a host of other “extraconstitu tional” justification s,

most observers contend, do not (Baker 2004; also see

Baird and Gangl 2006; Casey 1974).

But are these assumptions well founded? Do the ways

in which justices explain their decisions actually affect

the Court’s legitimacy? Previous studies have focused on

other factors affecting the Court’s institutional standing,

such as public response to specific decisions (Grosskopf

and Mondak 1998; Hoekstra and Segal 1996; Nicholson

and Howard 2003) or general perceptions of procedural

fairness (Baird and Gangl 2006; Casey 1974; Gibson

1989, 1991; Petrick 1968; Scheb and Lyons 2000, 2001;

Tyler and Rasinski 1991). However, the extent to which

legitimacy can be shaped by the actual arguments and

justifications in the Court’s opinions themselves remains

somewhat unclear (but see Hume 2006). Does the content

of the Court’s rulings—the rationales that justices pro-

vide to explain their votes—influence the Court’s institu-

tional well-being? That is, when it comes to Supreme

Court legitimacy, do reasons matter?

To make headway toward answering these questions,

this article presents the results of an experimental study

using simulated Supreme Court rulings. The experiment

isolates the effect of opinion content on the Court’s per-

ceived legitimacy by manipulating the reasoning used by

the justices—but not the outcome of the case—across

three treatment groups. That is, the study’s participants

all read and react to a case with the same holding, but in

one version the justices use conventional legalistic argu-

ments to support their ruling, in another they rely on poll-

ing data, and in a third they advance a religious and moral

justification. Altering the content of the opinions in this

way should help establish whether individuals are in fact

affected by the kinds of justifications that the Court pro-

vides in its decisions—something that previous work in

this area has yet to determine.

430667PRQ65110.1177/106591291143

0667FarganisPolitical Research Quarterly

1Elon University, Elon, NC, USA

Corresponding Author:

Dion Farganis, Department of Political Science, Elon University,

Gray Pavilion, Elon, NC 27244

Email: dfarganis@elon.edu

Do Reasons Matter? The Impact of

Opinion Content on Supreme

Court Legitimacy

Dion Farganis1

Abstract

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.

Keywords

Supreme Court, public opinion, judicial decision-making, institutional legitimacy, judicial politics