Politicization and the Two Modes of Evaluating Judicial Decisions

Abstract

Since courts lack control of the purse and the sword, understanding what causes the public to accept court decisions is essential. Using three studies, this paper shows that the public’s perception of the process judges use to make decisions changes the determinants of acceptance. When judges are perceived as using a principled decision-making process, institutional loyalty determines acceptance. When judges are perceived as using a politicized decision-making process, agreement with the policy implications of a decision determines acceptance. These results emphasize the importance of decision-making process perceptions in ensuring that courts can induce voluntary acceptance of their decisions.

Reconsidering Positivity Theory: What Roles do Politicization, Ideological Disagreement, and Legal Realism Play in Shaping U.S. Supreme Court Legitimacy?

“… This conclusion, drawn from the battle over the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court, has obvious consequences for the expected conflagration over filling vacant seats on the Court. Indeed, judicial politics scholars of several different stripes have become much concerned about the consequences of judicial politicization (see, e.g., Bonneau & Hall ; Hall ; Woodson ).…”

Critical coverage: How the media criticize supreme courts—Evidence from Israel

“…It should be noted that the same article could contain both specific and diffuse criticism, so for each article we coded diffuse, specific, or both diffuse and specific criticism, depending on the object of the criticism. In those articles with criticism, we coded aspects of the use of a political frame that have been suggested by various scholars (Andersen‐Jones, 2014; Johnson & Socker, 2012; Woodson, 2015). We examined five indicators of a political framing: (1) reference to the personal ideology of judges and candidates, including references to activism, to liberalism or conservatism, or to religious, ethnic, or gender influences on their decision making; (2) reference to justices' political maneuevers and bargaining in their relations with their peers or with the legislature; (3) reference to external political influences on the judiciary, including references to the danger of the politicization of the judicial sphere or to the involvement of political actors in any aspect of the judicial or nominations process; (4) reference to the implications of Court actions for democracy; (5) and references to the tension between Israel as a Jewish state and as a democratic state.…”

Judging Judicial Review in the American States

“…Indeed, there are systematic differences in the public’s decision to support a judicial decision (or a court) based on the method by which the judges on that court are retained (Nelson 2016) and the vigor of the retention politics judges face (e.g., Gibson 2012; Woodson 2015). In a similar vein, Bartels and Mutz (2009) examine differences in elected and appointed federal institutions, finding that the U.S. Supreme Court is a more powerful opinion leader than Congress, though under some conditions (such as when the issue at stake is a low-commitment one), the elected legislature can be more persuasive than the unelected Court.…”