Loyalty or Fairness: A Reexamination of the Relationship Between Fairness and Support for the Supreme Court

Abstract

In light of evidence that loyalty can trump fairness, and on the immense—and growing—influence of group loyalty in American politics (e.g., Iyengar and Westwood 2015), I believe now is an appropriate time to reexamine the relationship between fairness and support for the Supreme Court. Great rifts between, and cohesion among, groups in the United States have occurred in recent decades, such that individuals increasingly align with the political in-group and increasingly avoid and dislike the out-group (Huddy, Mason, and Aarøe 2015; Iyengar, Sood, and Lelkes 2012; Iyengar and Westwood 2015). Group members feel pride for conformity and shame for disloyalty (Suhay 2015). This Balkanization, and the motivations that accompany social identity-based polarization, provides fertile ground for loyalty to confront sociopolitical and moral norms like fairness. This study sets out to determine whether individuals are willing to forgo fairness on the part of the Supreme Court when their group benefits. I take”fairness” to encompass a host of characteristics, like trustworthiness, ethicality, integrity, honesty, and believability. I ask whether individuals will accept Court procedures that violate these principles, provided that they view themselves as policy”winners.” To find out, I conducted a nationally representative survey with an embedded experiment, as well as a convenience sample survey experiment.