normative beliefs about the role of legal and extralegal factors on justices’ decisions, more knowledge of the political arena tends to produce a stronger belief that justices will and were guided by legal principles in their decisions. Second, the effect of policy views on views of realism changes during the episode. Before the decision, views of the constitutionality of the mandate were unrelated to views of judicial realism; after the decision, those who were unhappy with the decision tended to see more extralegal bias in justices’ decision making. This result confirms the bivariate relationships seen in Figure 1, where the differences between those who believed health care is constitutional and those who did not are greater in the retrospective evaluations than in the prospective evaluations. [Table 4 about here] Next, to examine the change between retrospective and prospective evaluations of the influences on justices’ decisions, we turn to Table 4. Here, we regressed panelists’ perspective beliefs about extralegal influence on judicial decision making in the PPACA case, as well as their policy preferences and their level of political knowledge, on their retrospective beliefs about influences on justices’ decisions. In the second column of the table, we present the results including measures of ethnic and political identities. In both models, one’s prospective views about decision making provide a statistically significant predictor of one’s retrospective views of judicial decision making. There is evidence of motivated reasoning: Individuals who believed that the individual mandate was unconstitutional become more likely (even when controlling for their prospective views about influences on justices’ decisions) to believe that the Court was influenced by nonlegal factors. However, when political and ethnic
normative beliefs about the role of legal and extralegal factors on justices’ decisions, more knowledge of the political arena tends to produce a stronger belief that justices will and were guided by legal principles in their decisions. Second, the effect of policy views on views of realism changes during the episode. Before the decision, views of the constitutionality of the mandate were unrelated to views of judicial realism; after the decision, those who were unhappy with the decision tended to see more extralegal bias in justices’ decision making. This result confirms the bivariate relationships seen in Figure 1, where the differences between those who believed health care is constitutional and those who did not are greater in the retrospective evaluations than in the prospective evaluations. [Table 4 about here] Next, to examine the change between retrospective and prospective evaluations of the influences on justices’ decisions, we turn to Table 4. Here, we regressed panelists’ perspective beliefs about extralegal influence on judicial decision making in the PPACA case, as well as their policy preferences and their level of political knowledge, on their retrospective beliefs about influences on justices’ decisions. In the second column of the table, we present the results including measures of ethnic and political identities. In both models, one’s prospective views about decision making provide a statistically significant predictor of one’s retrospective views of judicial decision making. There is evidence of motivated reasoning: Individuals who believed that the individual mandate was unconstitutional become more likely (even when controlling for their prospective views about influences on justices’ decisions) to believe that the Court was influenced by nonlegal factors. However, when political and ethnic
public_attitudes_about_supreme_court_decision-making.docx