Behind the mask of method: political orientation and constitutional interpretive preferences.

Debate about how to best interpret the Constitution often revolves around interpretive methodologies (e.g., originalism or expansive interpretation). This article examines whether individuals' political orientation influences the methodologies they prefer to use to interpret the Constitution. We study this proposed relationship using a survey of federal law clerks and an experimental study with college students. The survey results indicate that, compared to conservatives, liberal clerks prefer the current meaning or the most plausible appealing meaning of the constitutional text, while conservatives prefer the original meaning of the text. Liberal clerks also prefer to interpret the Constitution much more expansively. The second study manipulates the policy implications of expansive interpretation and finds this manipulation differentially affects liberals' and conservatives' expansiveness preferences.

Do a law's policy implications affect beliefs about its constitutionality? An experimental test.

Although a substantial empirical literature has found associations between judges' political orientation and their judicial decisions, the nature of the relationship between policy preferences and constitutional reasoning remains unclear. In this experimental study, law students were asked to determine the constitutionality of a hypothetical law, where the policy implications of the law were manipulated while holding all legal evidence constant. The data indicate that, even with an incentive to select the ruling best supported by the legal evidence, liberal participants were more likely to overturn laws that decreased taxes than laws that increased taxes. The opposite pattern held for conservatives. The experimental manipulation significantly affected even those participants who believed their policy preferences had no influence on their constitutional decisions.

Who goes to the bargaining table? The influence of gender and framing on the initiation of negotiation.

Unlike typical negotiation experiments, these studies investigated when men and women initiate negotiations in the absence of overt prescriptions to negotiate. Using a new experimental paradigm, the authors showed that the framing of situations is a critical driver of gender differences in initiating negotiations. Drawing on literature on language, power, and politeness, the authors argued that framing situations as opportunities for negotiation is particularly intimidating to women, as this language is inconsistent with norms for politeness among low-power individuals, such as women. By contrast, framing situations as opportunities for asking is much less intimidating to women, as this language is more polite and role-consistent. Consequently, gender differences in initiating negotiations persisted when situations were framed as opportunities for negotiation yet were eliminated when situations were framed as opportunities to ask. Moreover, primed power attenuated gender differences in aversive reactions to the negotiation frame. In all, the studies presented begin to elucidate the reasons for gender differences in initiating negotiations and further illustrate that such effects depend on the situation.

Constraints and triggers: situational mechanics of gender in negotiation.

The authors propose 2 categories of situational moderators of gender in negotiation: situational ambiguity and gender triggers. Reducing the degree of situational ambiguity constrains the influence of gender on negotiation. Gender triggers prompt divergent behavioral responses as a function of gender. Field and lab studies (1 and 2) demonstrated that decreased ambiguity in the economic structure of a negotiation (structural ambiguity) reduces gender effects on negotiation performance. Study 3 showed that representation role (negotiating for self or other) functions as a gender trigger by producing a greater effect on female than male negotiation performance. Study 4 showed that decreased structural ambiguity constrains gender effects of representation role, suggesting that situational ambiguity and gender triggers work in interaction to moderate gender effects on negotiation performance.