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The Role of Emotional Language in Briefs before the US Supreme Court

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2022

Ryan C. Black ,
Matthew E. K. Hall ,
Ryan J. Owens  and
Eve M. Ringsmuth
Ryan C. Black
Affiliation:
Michigan State University
Matthew E. K. Hall
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
Ryan J. Owens
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin–Madison
Eve M. Ringsmuth*
Affiliation:
Oklahoma State University
*
Contact the corresponding author, Eve Ringsmuth, at [email protected].
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Abstract

The legal brief is a primary vehicle by which lawyers seek to persuade appellate judges. Despite wide acceptance that briefs are important, empirical scholarship has yet to establish their influence on the Supreme Court or fully explore justices’ preferences regarding them. We argue that emotional language conveys a lack of credibility to justices and thereby diminishes the party’s likelihood of garnering justices’ votes. The data concur. Using an automated textual analysis program, we find that parties who employ less emotional language in their briefs are more likely to win a justice’s vote, a result that holds even after controlling for other features correlated with success, such as case quality. These findings suggest that advocates seeking to influence judges can enhance their credibility and attract justices’ votes by employing measured, objective language.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Law and Courts , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , Fall 2016 , pp. 377 - 407
Copyright
© 2016 by the Law and Courts Organized Section of the American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.

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Footnotes

Previous versions of this article were presented at the 2014 meetings of both the Southern Political Science Association and Midwest Political Science Association. We thank Marcus Hendershot, Kevin McGuire, Quinlan Vos, Patrick Wohlfarth, the editor, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

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