Loyalty over Fairness: Acceptance of Unfair Supreme Court Procedures

Abstract

Evidence of procedural fairness leads individuals to support Supreme Court decisions, even ones with which they disagree. Yet, in some settings, unfair behavior is seen as acceptable, even praiseworthy, if it yields a pleasing outcome for one’s group. The loyalty norm occasionally trumps the fairness norm, and group loyalty has taken on increasing importance in American politics. I use a nationally representative survey with an embedded experiment, and a convenience sample survey experiment, to relate group (i.e., partisan) loyalty and perceptions of (un)fair behavior to support for the Court. I find that when group concerns are unclear, individuals tend to punish the Court for unfair behavior. However, despite conventional wisdom regarding fairness and support, individuals fail to censure unfair behavior when their group benefits from the Court’s impropriety. These effects hold when integrating preferences regarding specific case outcomes. Perceived unfair procedures do not universally harm evaluations of the Supreme Court.