You Better Shop Around: Litigant Characteristics and Supreme Court Support [pdf]

Actual PDF here: https://elizabethalane.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/d08a8-...

Note that the summary is somewhat misleading. This is about the public perception of cases, not the likelihood that the SCOTUS will reach a particular decision.

The study also tries to imply that SCOTUS cares about the public perception of its decisions, and it probably does - but this isn't something they prove. Instead, the study deals with the sentiment across focus groups.

In school, I remember my professor all the time stating things like the court only reached this result, because the defendant was a minister and the government should never have tried such a case against such a specific defendant as they created their own bad case law.