Ideology and Risk Focus: Conservatism and Opinion‐Writing In the U.S. Supreme Court

Abstract

Neuroscience proffers evidence that self-described conservatives have stronger fear responses and aversion to risk than self-described liberals. Combined with studies showing that judicial ideology drives the content of Supreme Court majority opinions, I argue that conservatism is linked to risk focus in Supreme Court majority opinions. I use the Language Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software on a sample of Supreme Court majority opinions, and find that conservative opinions score higher on the LIWC dimension called Risk Focus than liberal opinions. This effect is enhanced in criminal procedural cases. If conservative judges' perceptions of risk are inflated, and if such perceptions are reflected in the binding opinions that they author, then such opinions' heightened sense of risk may influence the perceptions of risk of lower-court judges, which may in turn affect their decision-making in such important areas as sentencing and convictions. Such a pattern raises important questions for the thousands of lower-court decisions which impact the basic liberties of American citizens. Objective. To determine whether judicial ideology affects the focus on risk of Supreme Court opinions. Methods. Original, random sampling of 1200-1300 Court opinions; use of LIWC software to analyze risk focus of each opinion; regression analysis of ideology on risk focus. Results. As ideology becomes more conservative, the Court's opinions demonstrate increased evidence of focus on risk. This effect is pronounced in criminal procedure cases. Conclusion. The theory is supported. Increasingly conservative Court opinions demonstrate an increased focus on risk.

Face mask mandates: Unilateral authority and gubernatorial leadership in US states

“…The text of each governor's mask mandate executive order was analyzed using a sentiment analysis program, LIWC (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count). LIWC has been utilized across an increasingly wide range of social science contexts beyond psychology, where it was developed, that includes analyzing the language used by dictators to remain in office (Windsor et al, 2018) to the analysis of Supreme Court opinions (Ballingrud, 2021; Corley & Wedeking, 2014). LIWC enables the quantitative analysis of language use through a nonstatistical machine‐readable dictionary‐based approach that counts the keywords in a text from previously defined categories (Pennebaker et al, 2015).…”