Endowment Effects and Judicial Valuations for Courts

• In Event: Studying Judicial Legitimacy: Scandals, Communication, and Personal Impact

Abstract

This study tests how people make judgments about benefits from decisions of the Supreme Court. I test intuitions about "endowment effects" from Prospect Thoery (Kahneman, Knatch, Thaler 1990). Using CES data it explores whether telling experimental participants about case decisions that confer different kinds of benefits influences their valuations of the US Supreme Court compared to participants who are not told about such decisions in line with thinking about "endowments."

The experiment involves a 2x2 design where 2/3 of CES participants are in treatment conditions and 1/3 act as a control without being told of any decision. Participants across treatment conditions will be told about two kinds of decision that each confer benefits. The first confers free speech benefits. The second involves a government constraint decision where the court strikes down the action of one branch (the President) because it impedes on the powers of another (Congress). Generally speaking, it could be that telling people about decisions that confer rights or keep government actors in line should increase assessments of benefits from the Court.

Another thing that could influence assessments is who is granted that right and what actor is being constrained. Therefore, in the Free speech conditions I also plan to manipulate who is granted the right to free speech (those in favor of gun control or those protesting on behalf of the second amendment). In the government constraint condition participants will be told that the Court either strikes down an executive order involving immigration rights that was issued by the former or current president (Trump vs. Biden) because it infringes on congressional law-making authority.

This design should allow us to see from the control condition (1) how different groups in society (like women and non-whites) evaluate potential gains and losses from the court for society and people like themselves. It should also allow us to see (2) if telling individuals about rights vs. government powers decisions raises those assessments of benefits and the relative influence of each. Finally, by manipulating who is getting the benefit or being restrained (3) we should get some leverage on whether it is conferring the right, in and of itself that is important, or its policy implications.

My hypotheses is that both kinds of case will increase evaluations over the control group. Decisions that confer rights to groups or chief executives favored by respondents should produce the biggest boost, but there may also be a boost for benefit conferring decisions that favor groups and politicians that people don’t like. It is possible that the policy implications of the decision will overshade the fact that the decision confers free speech or keeps government actors in line. Indeed, my earlier research suggests that this could very well be the case (Braman 2021), especially with Presidential figures that elicit strong attitudes.

Author

• Eileen Braman