Polls can reveal a lot about American’s political views, from their perceptions on President Donald Trump and his political movement to their distrust of the Supreme Court. Yet a new study reveals something surprising about Americans’ political and judicial philosophies — namely, that they often do not really understand the ideas they ostensibly follow.
“A recent study published in Political Research Quarterly suggests that although many Americans express preferences for specific judicial philosophies, most struggle to apply these principles consistently to legal issues,” reported PsyPost's Eric W. Dolan on Wednesday. “The research indicates that for the general public, judicial philosophy acts more as a symbolic label than a structured framework for evaluating the law. This disconnect provides evidence that the complex legal standards often debated during Supreme Court nominations may hold little practical meaning for the average voter.”
Dolan added, “During televised Supreme Court confirmation hearings, politicians frequently debate how nominees will interpret the United States Constitution. Two highly discussed approaches are originalism and living constitutionalism. Originalism suggests that judges should interpret the Constitution based on its meaning at the time it was written. Living constitutionalism indicates that constitutional interpretation should adapt to reflect modern views and societal sensibilities.”
In their study, researchers analyzed two samples of Americans, one consisting of 1,000 adults that demographically reflect the entire population based on the 2022 Cooperative Election Study and the other based on 483 legal professionals from 2025. While the authors expected ordinary Americans to profess a deep knowledge of the law when they advocated “originalism” (the philosophy associated with conservatives) or a “living” Constitution (the philosophy associated with liberals), they ultimately found that this was not the case.
“The results suggest a broad disconnect among the general public regarding judicial philosophy,” Dolan wrote. “When asked to pick a preferred legal philosophy, 44.5 percent of the mass public chose ‘not sure,’ while only 23.7 percent of legal professionals selected the unsure option. Only about 30 percent of the general public provided consistent answers across the three basic philosophy questions.”
Quoting one of the co-authors, Miles T. Armaly, an associate professor of political science at the University of Mississippi, PsyPost reported that the researchers “were a bit surprised by the number of respondents who simply declined to express a preference when given a ‘not sure’ option. Nearly half of the mass public did not identify with either originalism or living constitutionalism when that option was available. This suggests that earlier research, which didn’t always offer a ‘not sure’ response, may have overstated how many Americans truly have meaningful preferences over judicial philosophy.”
PsyPost added, “When looking at horizontal constraint, the mass public showed very little consistency in their responses to the specific legal cases. Legal professionals exhibited about 32 percent more consistency across the varying scenarios than the general public. Even with helpful hints provided in the question text, average citizens struggled to pick outcomes that followed a single, cohesive legal framework.” Similarly, “legal professionals achieved a consistency score of about 0.54, meaning they matched their case outcomes to their stated philosophy 54 percent of the time. The mass public scored approximately 0.38, meaning their case outcomes matched their stated philosophy only 38 percent of the time.”
Armaly concluded that this means ordinary Americans are not sufficiently well-informed about the law to vote in a constructive way based on legal issues.
“Those are sizeable differences, suggesting that judicial philosophy functions as an organizing framework for legal professionals, but only weakly for members of the public,” Armaly told PsyPost.
His statement to the publication was echoed by what he told PsyPost.
“Our findings suggest that judicial philosophy functions as an organizing framework for only a small subset of individuals, primarily those with higher levels of political sophistication or legal training,” the study’s abstract explained. “There is a disconnect between philosophy-based support and coherence in one’s understanding of that philosophy.”
