MORALITY AND DILEMMAS: A LANGUAGE ANALYSIS OF SUPREME COURT DECISIONS

Abstract

In recent years public trust in the U.S. Supreme Court has drastically decreased. Concerns that party bias infects the Court has caused many to question what influences the judicial decision-making process. Research on the subject has revealed that a clear correlation exists between the political affiliation of the Justices and their decisions. But could something more than ideology be underlying partisan differences in judicial decision-making? This study examines 86 Supreme Court decisions published since 2005 in an attempt to determine whether partisan differences in judicial decision-making can be attributed to moral differences across party lines. A language analysis model is used to measure the use of two moral principles– deontology and utilitarianism– in decisions authored by Republican and Democrat-appointed Justices. Although I find that partisan differences in judicial decision-making cannot necessarily be attributed to moral differences along deontological and utilitarian values, the data reveals unexpected differences in how Republican and Democrat-appointed Justices apply these principles. Republican-appointed Justices use more deontological and utilitarian language in civil rights cases than in First Amendment cases, providing evidence that issue domain matters for Republican-appointed Justices in judicial decision-making. Additionally I find that both Republican and Democrat-appointed Justices use more utilitarian language than deontological language, suggesting that utilitarianism may underlie Supreme Court decisions.