Ideological Position as a Variable in the Authoring of Dissenting Opinions on the Warren and Burger Courts

Investigation of dissenting opinions on the Warren and Burger courts in which all the justices in dissent joined the same dissenting opinion reveals that the justice in the extreme ideological position tends to write the dissenting opinion, but in the maximum losing coalitions the marginal justice (i.e., the justice ideologically closest to the majority) is equally likely to do so. These findings suggest that small group theory better explains dissenting opinion behavior than the theory of cognitive dissonance.