Social Imagery and Judicial Legitimacy: Evidence From Evangelical Christians

Extant research reveals that Americans hold politically consequential beliefs about the demographic composition of political groups and organizations—even when these beliefs are at odds with objective reality. In this article, we investigate the social imagery of the U.S. Supreme Court, with particular attention to beliefs about the Supreme Court Justices’ religious identities. In survey analysis, we find that evangelicals who believe there are more evangelical Christians on the Court grant the Court more legitimacy compared to non-evangelicals. Further, when evangelical Christians believe there are more atheists on the Court, they view the Court less legitimately than non-evangelicals. To rule out the potential of endogeneity, we conduct a conjoint experiment which demonstrates that evangelicals believe evangelical judges will increase the fairness of the Court and are more likely to support evangelical nominees compared to the average nominee. Likewise, they tend to believe out-group judges will harm the fairness of the Court and are less likely to support out-group judges. Our results have implications for diversity on the Court and how non-ideological factors can affect the Court’s legitimacy.