The Ideology of Supreme Court Opinions and Citations

A great deal of social, scientific, and legal research has been devoted to assessing the role of ideology in the Supreme Court's decisions. But this research has treated each case as equally important and entirely ignored the language of the opinions themselves. Yet it is the opinion's language, and its effect on future cases, that is the primary output of the Court and reflects the greatest potential ideological meaning. This effect can be partially measured through an analysis of the use of cases as precedents for future decisions. In this Article, I examine this use and whether the citing case was itself liberal or conservative, and I consider the nature of the citation as well. This enables me to ascertain the opinions that had the greatest ideological impact, liberal or conservative.