Politicized Battles: How Vacancies and Partisanship Influence Support for the Supreme Court

Abstract

Supreme Court vacancies are now characterized by great partisan efforts to confirm—or impede—the nomination. Amid a politicized vacancy before the 2020 election, there was cause to question the conclusion that these vacancies do not harm the judiciary in the public’s eyes. We utilize panel data collected before and after Justice Ginsburg’s death to investigate the effects of the vacancy and partisan posturing to fill it. We find that the battle over the vacancy yielded decreases in diffuse support among Democrats, particularly among those who read a story about Senate Republicans’ willingness to fill an election-year vacancy after refusing to in 2016. Support for federal judicial elections decreased across survey waves, but only among certain subsets of respondents. Finally, belief that one’s preferred 2020 candidate would nominate the next justice significantly influenced support for curbing. Elected branch politics appear capable of influencing the mass public’s level of support for the Court.

Is the Supreme Court’s Legitimacy Vulnerable to Intense Appointment Politics? Democrats’ Changed Views Around Justice Ginsburg’s Death

“…Since I have three questions each with five response options it runs from 3 to 15 with a mean just shy of eight and a standard deviation of 2.64. Thus, one third of a standard deviation corresponds to a little less than one answer category on one of three questions.5 This finding is seemingly different from the the results about Democrats support for judicial elections reported inArmaly and Lane (2022) which concerns the same period of time.…”

“…See alsoArmaly and Lane (2022) for a parallel working paper using the Ginsburg case that also finds legitimacy loss.…”

Mechanisms, measurements, and manifestations in evaluating the effects of confirmation hearings on Supreme Court legitimacy

“…Research shows that the viewing public does not approach the hearings blindly and that support for a nominee affects what the public hopes to take place at the hearings (Badas 2022). Moreover, partisanship and future policy expectations seem to serve as important considerations in how the public responds to vacancies and confirmation hearings (Armaly and Lane, 2022; Krewson, 2022), all of which complicate matters even before arriving at the question of how the partisanship within a confirmation hearing can affect support for the Court.…”

“…Even measuring institutional support proves involute, with long‐used measures being challenged as overstating support and understating public responses to the Court (Badas 2019). Using panel data surrounding Justice Ginsburg's death, for example, Armaly and Lane (2022) show that institutional support for the Court decreases using both traditional and more specific measures, though the relationship is more nuanced for support for federal judicial elections.…”

“…This is especially true considering the current political environment, which has seen an increase in calls for reform and a presidential commission dedicated to the topic. While contentious partisan confirmation hearings and vacancies on the Court might affect the extent to which people are willing to defend the institution from changes (Armaly and Lane, 2022; Krewson, 2022), they might not influence the sense of obligation that people feel toward the Court. We think investigating other downstream consequences of legitimacy is a fruitful area for future scholarship to explore.…”