Furgeson Joshua R, Babcock Linda, Shane Peter M
Argosy Foundation, Milwaukee, WI, USA.
Law Hum Behav. 2008 Jun;32(3):219-27. doi: 10.1007/s10979-007-9102-z. Epub 2007 Sep 21.
Although a substantial empirical literature has found associations between judges' political orientation and their judicial decisions, the nature of the relationship between policy preferences and constitutional reasoning remains unclear. In this experimental study, law students were asked to determine the constitutionality of a hypothetical law, where the policy implications of the law were manipulated while holding all legal evidence constant. The data indicate that, even with an incentive to select the ruling best supported by the legal evidence, liberal participants were more likely to overturn laws that decreased taxes than laws that increased taxes. The opposite pattern held for conservatives. The experimental manipulation significantly affected even those participants who believed their policy preferences had no influence on their constitutional decisions.
尽管大量实证文献发现法官的政治倾向与其司法判决之间存在关联，但政策偏好与宪法推理之间关系的本质仍不明确。在这项实验研究中，法学专业学生被要求判定一项假设法律是否符合宪法，其中该法律的政策影响被操控，而所有法律证据保持不变。数据表明，即使有动机去选择最受法律证据支持的裁决，自由派参与者推翻减税法律的可能性仍高于增税法律。保守派则呈现相反模式。实验操控甚至对那些认为自己的政策偏好对其宪法裁决没有影响的参与者也产生了显著影响。
