Migrant-Family Separation and the Diverging Normative Force of Higher-Order Laws

forthcoming, Journal of Legal Studies (2022)

35 Pages Posted: 12 Feb 2021 Last revised: 14 Feb 2022

See all articles by Kevin L. Cope

Kevin L. Cope

University of Virginia School of Law

Charles Crabtree

Dartmouth College

Date Written: January 28, 2021

Abstract

A growing experimental literature suggests that international law appears to have a larger impact on public opinion than constitutional law. Because the former U.S. policy of separating migrant families at the border arguably runs afoul of both the Constitution and international law, it provides an unusual opportunity to explore the normative pull of these norms experimentally in a single context. We fielded survey experiments with national samples in July 2018 and November 2020, asking respondents how much they supported the policy. We find that telling people that the policy is unconstitutional increases support for the policy, but only when the issue was receiving heavy media coverage, and that international law has no comparable effect on public opinion. We attempt to explain these seemingly counter-intuitive results in two ways. First, in studies that explore the impact of constitutional law, respondents may be “unsuccessfully treated.” Second, constitutional law treatments can trigger a backlash effect through defensive processing of information on constitutionality.

Keywords: constitutional law, international law, experiment, immigration

Suggested Citation

Cope, Kevin L. and Crabtree, Charles, Migrant-Family Separation and the Diverging Normative Force of Higher-Order Laws (January 28, 2021). forthcoming, Journal of Legal Studies (2022), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3774739 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3774739

Kevin L. Cope (Contact Author)

University of Virginia School of Law ( email )

580 Massie Road
WB345
Charlottesville, VA 22903
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.kevinlcope.com

Charles Crabtree

Dartmouth College ( email )

211 Silsby Hall, 3 Tuck Mall
Hanover, NH 03755
United States

HOME PAGE: http://charlescrabtree.com

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
92
Abstract Views
715
Rank
424,228
PlumX Metrics