Law, Politics, and Perception: How Policy Preferences Influence Legal Reasoning

Acknowledgments

There are many people to whom I am indebted for their help and support in researching and writing this book. Particular thanks go to three academic mentors I have harassed and exploited over the years. I thank Tom Nelson, from whom I have learned much as a teacher and collaborator, for the lessons in psychology, research design, and early professionalization ; Larry Baum, whose theoretical insights helped to give this project form, for listening to my ideas and responding in ways that always make me think about things more carefully; and my advisor, Greg Caldeira, whose support from the earliest stages of my graduate training has been invaluable. I am especially grateful for their openness to new ideas and the latitude they indulged and encouraged in my thinking about ways to test them. The most valuable lesson I learned is to follow my instincts, but to allow for the very real possibility that those instincts are wrong. I thank them for helping me construct a research agenda that allowed me to do just that. I have learned much in the process. I sincerely appreciate the assistance of the Center for the Study of Law and Social Policy at the Ohio State Law School, and more specifically Professors H. Camille Herbert, Peter M. Shane, and James Brudney in making possible my experiments with law students. This research was also supported by an Alumni Grant for Graduate Research and Scholarship and the Program for the Enhancement of Graduate Studies at Ohio State University. Several years ago, in his presence, I referred to Jeff Segal as “my chief enabler and primary foil.” I thank him and Harold J. Spaeth particularly for mentioning motivated reasoning in a  article and subsequent work. Obviously, the insight has been important in shaping my own thinking and research on legal decision making. Additionally, I’ve been lucky to benefit directly from the insights of prominent political psychologists including Kathleen McGraw, Marilynn Brewer, Phil Tetlock, ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xx Acknowledgments and various lecturers at the Summer Institute in Political Psychology for several years. Moreover, the input of Stephanie Maruska Boruda, Elliot Slotnick, Chuck Taber, Dean Lacy, Dan Simon, Greg Gwiasda, Wendy Watson, Kevin Scott, Margie Williams, Brandon Bartels, Paul Collins, Wendy Martinek, Sara Benesh, Nancy Scherer, Richard Pacelle, Steve Wasby, Richard Lau, Bridget Coggins, and Brent Strathman on particular aspects of this project has been invaluable. I could not have made it though this process without the friendship and intellectual support of several dear friends and colleagues. Sara Dunlap Gwiasda, Charles Smith, Javonne Paul Stewart, Khalilah BrownDean , Mary Outwater, Yoav Gortzak, Paul Fritz, Yoram Haftel, Lorraine Katt, Chris DeSimone, Nagu Kent, Omar Lalani, Leena Bhatia, Nehal Dadamudi, Karen Jacobs, Donna Vitale Savoretti, Aaron Jacoby, and Michelle Bird all kept me sane and motivated at various phases of this project. Also, special thanks to members of my family including Janet, Steven, Evelyn, Andrew, and Jared Braman for their continuous and multifaceted support. I am, of course, grateful to my Chair, Jeff Isaac, and colleagues at Indiana University in political science including Mike Ensley, Lauren Morris MacLean, Adbulkader Sinno, Ted Carmines, Jerry Wright, Bill Bianco, Margie Hershey, Regina Smyth, Yvette Alex-Assensoh, and Mike McGinnis . I have also benefitted from the friendship and advice of colleagues at the law school and several other departments at Indiana including Kevin Collins, Jeannine Bell, Ajay Mehrotha, Leandra Lederman, Ken Dau-Schmidt, Charlie Geyh (Law), Steven Jim Sheruman (Psychology), and Mike Grossberg (History). I have presented aspects of this research in talks for the Indiana Law School Faculty Colloquium Series, the Law and Society Workshop and the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University. Some of the research in this monograph has been previously published in other incarnations. Specifically, the study described in chapter  was the subject of an article coauthored by myself and Thomas E. Nelson (“Mechanism of Motivated Reasoning?: Analogical Perception in Discrimination Disputes” American Journal of Political Science , no.  []: –). The study described in chapter  was published as “Reasoning on the Threshold: Testing the Separability of Preferences in Legal Decision Making,” Journal of Politics , no.  (): –, and is reprinted by permission. Both studies have been modified for presentation in this manuscript; some of the language/ideas in those articles appear in this book’s first chapter, which introduces the concept of mo- Acknowledgments xxi tivated reasoning. I am grateful to both journals (and Tom!) for granting permission...