Most Americans don’t actually understand the judicial philosophies they endorse

A recent study published in Political Research Quarterly suggests that although many Americans express preferences for specific judicial philosophies, most struggle to apply these principles consistently to legal issues. The research indicates that for the general public, judicial philosophy acts more as a symbolic label than a structured framework for evaluating the law. This disconnect provides evidence that the complex legal standards often debated during Supreme Court nominations may hold little practical meaning for the average voter.

During televised Supreme Court confirmation hearings, politicians frequently debate how nominees will interpret the United States Constitution. Two highly discussed approaches are originalism and living constitutionalism. Originalism suggests that judges should interpret the Constitution based on its meaning at the time it was written. Living constitutionalism indicates that constitutional interpretation should adapt to reflect modern views and societal sensibilities.

Judges and legal scholars frequently use these specific concepts to justify their rulings. “Judicial philosophy is one of the most prominent ways that judges, politicians, and the media talk about courts,” said Miles T. Armaly, an associate professor of political science at the University of Mississippi and co-author of the study. “A growing body of research shows that ordinary Americans express preferences for philosophies like originalism and living constitutionalism, and they even evaluate judges and case outcomes through that lens.”

“Because these philosophies tend to align with ideological predispositions at the elite level (i.e., originalism is typical of conservative judges, living constitutionalism of liberal ones), individuals may be able to nominally link a philosophy to their political preferences, but it remains unclear whether they understand what those philosophies actually entail or can apply them consistently across legal questions.”

Recognizing a legal phrase is different from putting those theories into practice. “Recognizing a label is very different from consistently applying the principles that label represents,” Armaly added. “Thus, our motivation was to distinguish between recognizing a judicial philosophy and consistently applying it across different legal questions.”

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The authors designed this research to test if the public possesses philosophical constraint. This term describes a cohesive belief system where specific attitudes about legal issues naturally flow from a broader understanding of judicial philosophy. A highly constrained individual would consistently support legal outcomes that match their chosen philosophy.

The authors wanted to see if everyday citizens apply these legal principles as consistently as trained legal professionals do. “Part of our contribution is methodological,” Armaly said. “Rather than assuming legal professionals possess coherent judicial philosophies, we measure them directly and compared them to the mass public. That comparison gives us a much more meaningful benchmark than comparing the public to an abstract ideal of what citizens ‘should’ know.”

To explore this question, the researchers collected data from two separate surveys. First, they gathered responses from a nationally representative sample of 1,000 United States adults using the 2022 Cooperative Election Study. Second, they recruited an online sample of 483 legal professionals in early 2025. This specialized group consisted largely of practicing attorneys, paralegals, and legal assistants.

Participants in both groups answered questions designed to test their understanding and application of judicial philosophy. The scientists first measured basic preference consistency by asking participants to identify their preferred philosophy. The survey asked if respondents believed the Constitution’s meaning is fixed or can change. It also asked if judges should interpret the text as originally understood or according to current modern views.

The authors then measured horizontal constraint, which looks at how consistently individuals apply a philosophy across different scenarios. Participants read five hypothetical cases dealing with constitutional issues like Miranda rights, gun ownership, and political speech. For each case, they chose an outcome that aligned with either an originalist or a living constitutionalist perspective. The survey offered explicit hints in the case descriptions to help respondents match outcomes to specific legal philosophies.

Next, the scientists evaluated vertical constraint to see if participants’ specific case choices matched their originally stated judicial philosophy. For example, if a person claimed to be an originalist, the researchers checked whether that person selected originalist outcomes in the hypothetical cases. The researchers measured this by calculating the proportion of matching responses across fifteen possible combinations.

The results suggest a broad disconnect among the general public regarding judicial philosophy. When asked to pick a preferred legal philosophy, 44.5 percent of the mass public chose “not sure,” while only 23.7 percent of legal professionals selected the unsure option. Only about 30 percent of the general public provided consistent answers across the three basic philosophy questions.

The authors did not anticipate such a high level of uncertainty. “We were a bit surprised by the number of respondents who simply declined to express a preference when given a ‘not sure’ option,” Armaly told PsyPost. “Nearly half of the mass public did not identify with either originalism or living constitutionalism when that option was available. This suggests that earlier research, which didn’t always offer a ‘not sure’ response, may have overstated how many Americans truly have meaningful preferences over judicial philosophy.”

When looking at horizontal constraint, the mass public showed very little consistency in their responses to the specific legal cases. Legal professionals exhibited about 32 percent more consistency across the varying scenarios than the general public. Even with helpful hints provided in the question text, average citizens struggled to pick outcomes that followed a single, cohesive legal framework.

The findings for vertical constraint were similar. Legal professionals achieved a consistency score of about 0.54, meaning they matched their case outcomes to their stated philosophy 54 percent of the time. The mass public scored approximately 0.38, meaning their case outcomes matched their stated philosophy only 38 percent of the time.

According to Armaly, these numerical gaps between experts and the general public reveal a lot about how people process legal information. “The difference we found were not only statistically significant, but also substantively meaningful,” Armaly said. “Legal professionals exhibited roughly one-third more ‘horizontal’ philosophical constraint (i.e., consistency across legal attitudes) and about 45% more ‘vertical’ philosophy constraint (i.e., consistency between stated philosophy and legal positions) relative to the mass public.”

This gap suggests that extensive legal training provides a structure that everyday voters lack. “Those are sizeable differences, suggesting that judicial philosophy functions as an organizing framework for legal professionals, but only weakly for members of the public,” Armaly added.

Despite these low scores among the public, the researchers caution against making broad judgments about voters’ civic abilities. “The main takeaway is not that Americans are uninformed or incapable of thinking about constitutional issues,” Armaly said. “Instead, we find that most people do not appear to organize their views around abstract judicial philosophies in the same way that legal professionals do. Many people can express a preference for, say, originalism, but the label often does not translate into consistent judgments across different legal questions.”

“This is important because individuals offer more institutional support and are more likely to accept outcomes when they perceive courts to employ their preferred policy,” Armaly explained. “However, in the absence of a label describing the decision as ‘originalist’ or ‘living constitutionalist,’ many are infrequently able to spot judicial decisions that employed their preferred philosophy.”

A lack of philosophical constraint does not mean that the public ignores legal interpretation entirely. “One important caveat is that our findings should not be interpreted as saying that judicial philosophy is unimportant, that the public ignores it, or that the public lacks the capacity to use judicial philosophy in a coherent, structured way,” Armaly said. “Previous research shows that people do respond to judges’ stated philosophies when evaluating nominees and court decisions. We do not doubt that these are important factors for individuals assessing institutions.”

Instead, the results provide evidence that the depth of public understanding is often shallow. “Our point is narrower,” Armaly explained. “Many people seem to recognize and use the labels without possessing a deeply structured understanding of what those philosophies consistently imply across cases. Our findings suggest that, for many, judicial philosophy is more of a label than a lens, more akin to a bumper sticker than a belief system.”

One potential limitation is that the online sample of legal professionals might not perfectly represent the entire population of working attorneys and judges in the United States. The data also indicates that even basic ideological consistency does not fully explain the public’s varied responses to specific constitutional cases. Future studies could explore how these patterns translate to other countries with different constitutional frameworks.

The researchers also plan to investigate the origins of the public’s legal opinions. “One natural next step is to better understand how people learn these philosophical labels,” Armaly said. “We know that politicians, confirmation hearings, and the media regularly invoke terms like ‘originalism,’ but it remains an open question whether those discussions increase genuine understanding or simply increase familiarity with the labels.”

“More broadly, we’re interested in how people form attitudes about courts and whether those attitudes are grounded in legal principles, political identities, or something else.”

The study, “Do Americans Understand the Judicial Philosophies They Endorse? Evidence From Mass and Elite Surveys,” was authored by Miles T. Armaly, Christopher N. Krewson, and Elizabeth A. Lane.