Mechanism of Motivated Resoning? : A Look at the Separabilty of Preferences in Legal Decision-Making.

This study considers the separability of preferences in legal decision-making. Employing an experimental design I investigate whether decision-makers are able to separate their views on three distinct policy matters from a seemingly neutral "threshold" decision they are asked to make in a case involving multiple issues. One hundred fifteen law student participants were given a mock legal brief containing identical legal arguments on both sides of a standing dispute. All participants were told that the issue arose in a case where the spouse of city firefighter was challenging an ordinance restricting the political expression of public employees. The experiment involved a 2 x 2 factorial design where the content of the political expression at issue (pro-life vs. pro-choice) and the jurisdiction where the case was pending (with direct controlling authority vs. without direct controlling authority) were experimentally manipulated. Participants’ policy views on (1) abortion (2) free speech and (3) restrictions on the political expression of public employees were measured to test how they influenced the standing decision. Findings demonstrate that participants were able to separate views on restrictive ordinances from the standing decision in line with traditional notions of decision making. Opinions on free speech, however, did seem to influence the decision. Also, abortion opinions interacted with speech content to influence participants? decisions, but in a manner not wholly consistent with legal or attitudinal accounts of decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]