Two prominent theories of legal decision making provide seemingly contradictory explanations for judicial outcomes. In political science, the Attitudinal Model suggests that judicial outcomes are driven by judges' sincere policy preferences - judges bring their ideological inclinations to the...

In assessing how the social forces of public opinion shape U.S. Supreme Court justices’ decision making, scholars have traditionally considered public opinion as somewhat of a monolith. In other words, it has been presumed that there is one, singular public opinion and that it affects the...