alright so did some digging and found out how to test this question through documentation and then how to do scopes through research.
irb> IssuePolicy::Scope.new(@user, Issue.all).resolve.class
This returns an ActiveRecord::QueryMethods::WhereChain
So the next question really becomes do i want to test the structure or the behavior of this. I chose to test the behavior because i really just care about whether my scope has been properly applied. So the scope testing above is fine for me. As an added helper, Here is how I tested that only role of employee can access and role of citizen is denied, hope that it helps someone.
require 'spec_helper'
describe IssuePolicy do
subject { IssuePolicy }
permissions :index?, :show?, :create?, :new?, :update?, :edit?, :destroy? do
it "denies access to citizen" do
expect(subject).not_to permit(FactoryGirl.create(:user, role: 'citizen'), Issue.create())
end
it "allows access to employee" do
expect(subject).to permit(FactoryGirl.create(:user, role: 'employee'), Issue.create())
end
end
end