The Linguistic Style of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

With the historic confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, many are wondering what type of Justice she will be. Most of this focus has been on trying to predict what type of outcomes she will reach as a Supreme Court Justice based on how she decided cases as a lower court judge. This Article has a different focus. Given that lower courts treat the words of Supreme Court opinions as law, how Justices write these opinions has important significance. This study is the first to empirically examine the linguistic style of then-Judge Jackson. It does so by analyzing opinions she wrote as a district court judge and comparing those to the recent opinions of current and recent Supreme Court Justices, as well as opinions from then-Judge Sotomayor as a district court judge. For the analysis, this study uses the just-updated Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (“LIWC-22”) software to measure 15 different features of then-Judge Jackson and various Justices’ linguistic style in opinion writing. While this study cannot say anything about how Justice Jackson may vote or what her jurisprudence may look like, it does provide an insight into the linguistic style she will likely employ in writing opinions for the highest court in the land. And that style, as measured by LIWC-22, appears to be most like then-Judge Sonia Sotomayor, as well as Chief Justice Roberts.