Social Imagery and Judicial Legitimacy: Evidence From Evangelical Christians

• Published date: 01 March 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129231197207
• Author: Alex Badas,Eric R. Schmidt
• Date: 01 March 2024
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2024, Vol. 77(1) 137–151

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129231197207

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Social Imagery and Judicial Legitimacy:

Evidence From Evangelical Christians

Alex Badas

1

and Eric R. Schmidt

2



Abstract

Extant research reveals that Americans hold politically consequential beliefs about the demographic composition of

political groups and organizations—even when these beliefs are at odds with objective reality. In this article, we in-

vestigate the social imagery of the U.S. Supreme Court, with particular attention to beliefs about the Supreme Court

Justices’religious identities. In survey analysis, we f‌ind that evangelicals who believe there are more evangelical Christians

on the Court grant the Court more legitimacy compared to non-evangelicals. Further, when evangelical Christians

believe there are more atheists on the Court, they view the Court less legitimately than non-evangelicals. To rule out the

potential of endogeneity, we conduct a conjoint experiment which demonstrates that evangelicals believe evangelical

judges will increase the fairness of the Court and are more likely to support evangelical nominees compared to the

average nominee. Likewise, they tend to believe out-group judges will harm the fairness of the Court and are less likely to

support out-group judges. Our results have implications for diversity on the Court and how non-ideological factors can

affect the Court’s legitimacy.

Keywords

Supreme Court, Religion and Politics, Legitimacy, Social Imagery, Evangelicals

“Religious liberty is under attack in many places because it is

dangerous to those who want to hold complete power. It also

probably grows out of something dark and deep in the human

DNA —the tendency to distrust and dislike people who are

not like ourselves.”

–U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito (2022),

Notre Dame Religious Liberty Summit (Rome,

Italy; quoted in Notre Dame Law School 2022).

When Justice Alito addressed the Notre Dame Reli-

gious Liberty Summit in July 2022, the U.S. Supreme

Court had just concluded its most controversial term in

recent memory. In June, the Court had overturned both

Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey

(1992)—declaring that the U.S. Constitution did not

protect a woman’s right to abortion. That same month, the

Court ruled (in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District

2022) that a public school football coach could not be

f‌ired for publicly praying during each game. Both deci-

sions have empowered religious conservatives. Both seem

motivated—at least in part—by the Justices’religious

convictions. Clergy at Faith and Liberty, a ministry as-

sociated with Liberty Counsel, claim to have prayed with

Justices in chambers and to have ministered to the Court’s

most conservative Justices (Voght and Dickinson 2022).

For better or worse, religion—and the concern for reli-

gious liberty that now animates the Christian Right (Lewis

2018)—is central to the Court’s public prof‌ile.

Noting this trend, this article explores how evangelical

Christians perceive the U.S. Supreme Court. Given the

current Court’s concern for accommodating religion in the

public sphere, it makes sense that evangelical Christians

would perceive the Court to be more legitimate. Yet while

some scholars might attribute this to partisanship or

ideology, we focus on an under-explored factor: what

evangelical Christians believe about Supreme Court

Justices’religious identities. Our rationale is straight-

forward: if Americans’political attitudes ref‌lect the social

imagery of the political parties (Claassen et al. 2019;

1

University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA

2

Millsaps College, Jackson, MS, USA

Corresponding Author:

Alex Badas, Department of Political Science, University of Houston, 3551

Cullen Boulevard Room 447, Houston, TX 77204, USA.

Email: abadas@uh.edu