Status, Ideology, and Integrative Complexity on the U.S. Supreme Court: Rethinking the Politics of Political Decision Making

Prior studies of integrative complexity indicate that political conservatives tend to interpret policy issues in less complex ways than do liberals and moderates. However, ideological preference in that work was systematically confounded with decision makers’ status in the groups to which they belonged. The study reported here varied both factors independently in a content analysis of Supreme Court opinions. In contrast to previous conclusions, results supported a status-contingency model, which predicts higher levels of complexity among members of majority factions than among members of either minority factions or unanimous groups independently of the ideological content of their views.