Supreme Court justices are more likely to borrow language from interest group briefs when it will go unnoticed

In recent decades, the Supreme Court has been seen as increasingly as a political as well as a legal institution, with justices’ partisan ideologies informing their decision-making. In new research, Kayla Canelo examines how justices reference and cite friend-of-the-Court or amicus curiae briefs from interest groups in their majority opinions. She finds that justices are more likely to borrow language from interest group briefs which are ideologically closer to their own interests, and is likely to go unnoticed, but are less likely to directly cite these briefs, potentially to protect their own legitimacy in the public’s eye.