Ideology in or Cultural Cognition of Judging: What Difference Does It Make?

I will offer a critique of the increasingly popular claim that judging is ideological in nature. That claim rests on a growing body of empirical literature that correlates federal judges\u27 decisions with some measure of their ideology, typically the political party of the president who appointed them. I\u27m going to argue that proponents of this position, which I\u27ll call the ideology thesis, haven\u27t adequately specified the mechanism by which they understand values to be influencing judges. These proponents have failed, in particular, to distinguish between values as a self-conscious motive for decisionmaking and values as a subconscious influence on cognition. Once that distinction is made, it becomes clear that the evidence cited to support the ideology thesis fits just as well with another account, which I\u27ll call the cultural cognition thesis. Of course, I\u27ll also explain what the difference between ideology and cultural cognition is, and why it makes a difference, practically, whether it\u27s ideology or cultural cognition that\u27s affecting judges