Posture (judicial)
In the Institute's measurement work, a stable decision filter over a shared list of legal moves: which moves a judge admits, how it ranks them when they conflict, and at what level of generality it pitches the controlling principle.
First used in From the Supreme Court Machine to Ariadne's Thread
Posture in this sense is a scholarly construct, not a legal source; no statute or case defines it. It is also distinct from procedural posture, the stage and standard of a motion, which the Posture Mismatch Taxonomy addresses.
The construct unifies named judicial philosophies. A textualist and a purposivist have access to the same moves (text, history, purpose, canons, precedent) and differ only in the filter. Two families are distinguished: meaning-fixing postures at the appellate tier, and dispositional postures at the trial tier, where the Ariadne work concentrates.
One discipline governs the construction: a posture describes how a judge runs cases, never whom it favors. Ideological lean is kept on a separate shelf, so that a procedural habit is not mistaken for a bias.