Moral Justifications on the Rehnquist Court

Abstract

What moral justifications do we find in Fourth Amendment judicial opinions of the Rehnquist Court, and what does this suggest about future Court decision making? First, the authors develop the moral justification model of judicial decision making in a literature review, with linguistic patterns and categories by Hercules and Herbert for content analysis. Second, they discuss the methodological strategies used in this content analysis of official opinions of the Court on the Fourth Amendment from 1986 to 1994. Third, from this content analysis, the authors describe the patterns of moral justification in Rehnquist Court Fourth Amendment opinions, including the Court’s assessments of the moral virtue of “druggie” defendants. Finally, they draw conclusions from this analysis for a moral science of the politics of law.