Moral Values and Judicial Decision-Making

Abstract

This paper empirically investigates the relationship between morality and judicial decision-making. I use Moral Foundations Theory as a framework for morality. Using published judicial opinions and a text analysis, I construct measures of moral values for judges on the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals. I survey law students, lawyers, and judges, who classify the moral relevance of case types based on the subject matter of cases. Using the constructed moral values measure and detailed information on judges and a subset of cases, I then explore the explanatory power of judicial moral values in judicial decision-making. I find mostly null results.