God Save This Honorable Court

Abstract

If Supreme Court behavior is structured largely by the policy preferences of the justices, political scientists ought to consider the source of those preferences. Religion is one force that can strongly shape a judge’s worldview and therefore her or his votes. In this article, the author examines the effect of religion on U.S. Supreme Court votes in eleven issue areas plausibly connected to religious values. Catholic justices vote in ways that more closely adhere to the teachings of the Catholic Church than do non-Catholic justices even after controlling for ideology. These results may indicate that Catholic theology is different from Protestant or Jewish theology. It is also possible that on some issues there is not much of a theological difference, but religious values play a more prominent role in public life for Catholic justices.

Bishops and Friends: History and Legal Interpretation in RecentAmicus CuriaeBriefs before the Supreme Court

“…One 2004 study of district and appeals court judges, for example, found that "the religious background of judges proved to be the single most prominent feature"; 38 similarly, a 2012 analysis of Roman Catholic justices' voting record concluded that "religion is a source of judicial policy preferences, independent of underlying differences in ideology and justice-specific fixed effects." 39 By contrast, a 2013 study reached more modest conclusions concerning the differences between Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant justices, 40 and a 2015 article called into question the methodological presuppositions informing earlier studies' accounts of Roman Catholics on the Court. 41 As this sample of scholarship already attests, questions concerning justices' religious allegiances have been particularly pressing for the Court's Roman Catholic constituency.…”

“…42 Both the scholarly community and the public media have raised questions about Roman Catholic Justices' potential responsiveness to their tradition's priorities; while results vary, the specter of undue influence remains. 43 And yet, Roman Catholic justices have shown no greater propensity towards citing Catholic amicus briefs than have their non-Catholic colleagues; indeed, some of the harshest critique of this practice and the alleged democratic impulse that propels it has come from one of the most stalwart Catholic justices of the past decades. 44 This survey merely skims the surface of scholarship on amicus curiae participation in the United States.…”