Under Review
There's No Place Like Home: Home State Bias in Environmental Pollution Disputes
The US federal courts were designed, in part, to be neutral arbiters in disputes between parties from
different states. Interested observers have long debated how successful the courts are in that mission.
In this study, I test their neutrality using real-world courtroom data. Applying theories of in-group
bias to judicial decision-making, I hypothesize that parties that share a home state with a federal
judge are more likely to be successful when competing against an out-of-state opponent. I test this
expectation using a generalizable causal inference strategy and a dataset of over 800 environmental
pollution cases and 2,500 individual votes. The results indicate that parties with a home state
advantage over their opponent are more likely to win a judge's vote, both when they are accused of
pollution and when they are accusing others. This study is an example of the normative and empirical
concerns that arise when decision-makers like judges rely on preconceived biases. Not only do they
complicate the efforts of researchers to model judicial behavior, but they also call into question the
premise of equality in the American justice system.
Affinity or Ambivalence? Voter Attitudes Toward the Illinois Workers’ Rights Amendment
(with
Magic Wade and Alan J. Simmons)
In 2022 Illinois voters were faced with a ballot measure asking them whether they supported adding a
Workers’ Rights Amendment to the state constitution. Despite countervailing forces that might have
made passage difficult, the amendment passed. We explore whether support for collective bargaining
rights and union protections followed a predictably partisan pattern in Illinois, or whether support for
the amendment was shaped by arguments, endorsements, or other voter demographics. Fielding a survey with
a representative sample of 1,000 Illinois voters, we find that partisans had stronger attitudes toward
the WRA than independents, that Democrats and Independents were more fixed in their attitudes than
Republicans when exposed to experimental treatments focused on arguments and endorsements, and that
working-class voters were more ambivalent than college educated voters. We conclude by conjecturing
about the meaning of our results in light of the outcome of the amendment on the 2022 ballot.
Holidays at the High Court: The Effect of the Calendar on the US Supreme Court
Political identity has become a heuristic that increasingly aids in decision-making. For US Supreme Court Justices, political identity is tied to ideology. Traditionally this identity has been considered relatively static, when, just as with everyone else, it likely fluctuates based on the level of threat posed to the justices' respective in-groups. This paper examines the propensity of justices to engage with members of their ideological out-group during periods on the calendar when the perceived threat level is low. Drawing on literature from political psychology and behavior, I theorize increased Supreme Court collegiality during the traditional winter holiday season. I expect to observe an increase in the number of counter-attitudinal votes, a decrease in the number of dissenting votes, and less animus exchanges during oral argument. I find support for all my hypotheses using contemporary causal inference methods and datasets of over 4,000 justice votes and 1,000 oral arguments. These findings add to a growing body of work that emphasizes the effect of extraneous influences on federal judges. Such influences make it more challenging to explain judicial decisions and have the potential to influence the impartiality of the justice system.
Working Papers
In-Groups and Legitimacy: The Effect of Heuristics in Diffuse Support Evaluations
(with Joshua
Boston)
Scholars have long considered whether and how public approval of judicial institutionsvaries
systematically with legal policy; as particular case outcomes increasingly alignwith individuals’
partisan or ideological identities, individuals would be more likelyto approve of how judges perform
their jobs. But scholars have largely ignored therole of judicial identity in conditioning public
acceptance of case outcomes and ap-proval of judges. Do perceptions of a judge’s identity
condition public support? Inparticular, does shared identity in partisan and religious affiliation
between a judgeand a respondent increase court job approval and legitimacy evaluations? We employa
survey experiment that manipulates judge religion and partisanship in a hypotheticallower court decision
in a free exercise of religion case. We expect that shared identitybetween a judge and respondent will
increase approval and legitimacy. Our study hasimplications for understanding the basis of power for
life-tenured federal judges in ademocratic polity.
Short Terms, Big Impact? How Term Length Influence Legislator Behavior
(with
Matthew Geras, John Transue and Alan J. Simmons)
Across the fifty US states, legislative term lengths vary both across and within legislative chambers, raising questions about how these differences shape legislative behavior and electoral performance. This study leverages a unique feature of the Illinois General Assembly as a case study, to examine whether the subset of senators assigned to two-year terms behave more like their House counterparts, who serve the same term length, or their Senate colleagues, who serve four-year terms. Using a dataset of legislators from the 1980s to the present, we assess legislative consequences through measures of effort, productivity, and political ambition. Our findings contribute to the broader understanding of how institutional constraints, such as term length, shape the actions of elected officials with implications for both state and federal legislators.
