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The (Dis)Advantage of Certainty: The Importance of Certainty in Language
Author(s) -
Corley Pamela C.,
Wedeking Justin
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
law and society review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.867
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1540-5893
pISSN - 0023-9216
DOI - 10.1111/lasr.12058
Subject(s) - certainty , supreme court , legal certainty , appeal , context (archaeology) , law , principal (computer security) , political science , social psychology , psychology , epistemology , computer science , philosophy , computer security , paleontology , biology
How can legal decision makers increase the likelihood of a favorable response from other legal and social actors? To answer this, we propose a novel theory based on the certainty expressed in language that is applicable to many different legal contexts. The theory is grounded in psychology and legal advocacy and suggests that expressing certainty enhances the persuasiveness of a message. We apply this theory to the principal–agent framework to examine the treatment of S upreme C ourt precedent by the F ederal C ourts of A ppeal. We find that as the level of certainty in the S upreme C ourt's opinion increases, the lower courts are more likely to positively treat the C ourt's decision. We then discuss the implications of our findings for using certainty in a broader context.