January 15, 2001
Does religion influence judges?
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___Does the religious faith of a federal appeals court judge make any difference in how that judge decides cases of religious liberty?
___The answer depends on what the faith of the judge is, according to new research by Barbara Yarnold of Florida International University.
___Judges who are Baptist or Catholic, she finds, are more likely than other judges to take "pro-religion" positions in cases involving the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
___Yarnold's findings are reported in the September 2000 issue of the Review of Religious Research. Her study was based on an analysis of 1,356 federal appeals court decisions rendered from 1970 to 1990 in cases dealing specifically with either the free exercise clause or the establishment clause of the First Amendment.
___The outcomes of these cases were evaluated in light of the stated religious affiliation of the judges involved.
___For this study, rulings that favored religious activity or expression were coded as "pro-religion," while cases that disallowed religious activity or expression were coded as "anti-religion."
___"Baptist and Catholic judges were more likely to render decisions that were pro-religion in cases involving religious liberties than were other judges," Yarnold explained.
___Lutheran judges were more likely to take an anti-religion position, although this tendency was not as statistically strong as the Baptist and Catholic finding.
___Judges of all faiths were inclined toward a pro-religion position, Yarnold said, but only the Baptist and Catholic judges stood out with strong statistical significance.
___"Being not religious did not make a significant difference in the outcome, since the non-religious still, in general, adopted a pro-religion position," she added.
___Also, "the fact that judges were of the same denominations as the ones concerned in the cases did not significantly increase the chances of winning, though it did make a pro-religion decision more likely."
___Yarnold theorizes that Baptists and Catholics may be bent more toward affirming religious practice because of the minority status and persecution these religions have endured in the past.
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