The Power of Words: Strategic judicial opinion-writing to influence politics and society

How do justices manage the transparency surrounding their decisions through strategic opinion-writing? To ensure compliance with decisions justices require public support. The more transparent the environment, the more likely the public becomes aware of judicial decisions and of political threats to noncompliance. Contrary to prior research, we conceptualize transparency as a continuous dimension, which justices manage through the way they write opinions and press releases. To assess this argument we analyze Senate decisions and press releases published by the German Federal Constitutional Court. We argue that commonly employed scoring approaches to readability are insufficient to disentangle the Court’s strategic management of transparency. Instead, transparency is achieved by easily readable decisions. Easily readable decisions are not only shorter but rely on vocabulary broadly understood. Applying novel tools of Natural Language Processing we find that the more complex a judicial opinion, the more likely it is supplemented by a press release. Moreover, the combination of readability and choice of vocabulary explains media coverage of decisions. The findings have major implications for our understanding of how courts strategically manage transparency surrounding their decisions.