Source Cues and Public Support for the Supreme Court

Abstract

It is well known that the public often relies on cues or heuristics when forming opinions. At the same time, leading theories of opinion formation about the Supreme Court see such support as relatively fixed. Using a series of survey experiments, we find source cues significantly influence the public's support for the Court, including the extent to which individuals believe the Court should be independent from the elected branches. Specifically, we find partisan source cues play a significant role in shaping public opinion regarding life tenure for the justices and the extent to which the Court should have the final say in constitutional matters-individuals are less likely to support court-curbing measures when informed that elites from the opposite party have proposed them than when such measures are endorsed by either a neutral source or members of their own party. We also find a strong connection between specific support for particular decisions and the degree

Presidential Rhetoric and U.S. Supreme Court Rulings: The Effect of Going Public on Citizen Evaluations of Institutions and Policy

“…The literature on opinion formation argues that the public often does not possess high levels of information or knowledge with regard to most public policies; this lack of information leads to individuals relying on cues and heuristics from other sources to aid in the opinion formation process (Clark and Kastellec ; Nicholson and Hansford ; Zaller 1992). Heuristics are conceptualized as “mental shortcuts” that enable individuals to gain information or knowledge from a reliable source and, in turn, use this information to formulate an evaluation of a given issue (Druckman and Lupia ; Lupia ; ; Lupia and McCubbins ; Popkin ).…”

Does Public Support for Judicial Power Depend on Who is in Political Power? Testing a Theory of Partisan Alignment in Africa

“…Yet, because courts can constrain executive power and executives possess mechanisms to influence the judiciary, support for judicial power may turn on partisan alignment with the president, a political foundation prior work has left unexplored. Recent work in the United States has shown that support for high courts can be driven by disagreement with rulings on policy (Bartels and Johnston 2013, 2020; Christenson and Glick 2015) and partisan grounds (Clark and Kastellec 2015; Nicholson and Hansford 2014). However, with their focus on alignment with court outputs, these studies lack a theoretical framework outlining the mechanisms by which citizens may assess judicial power instrumentally and on the basis of partisan attachments to incumbents in political power.…”

Naming Names: The Impact of Supreme Court Opinion Attribution on Citizen Assessment of Policy Outcomes

“…Such heuristic cue‐following allows people to make quick assessments on complex matters in order to help make sense of the world around them in an efficient and largely effective manner (e.g., Kahneman ; Nicholson and Hansford ; Salamone ). In experimental settings, researchers have found that the public is responsive to partisan source cues about the Court (Clark and Kastellec ; Nicholson and Hansford ) and that the ideology of the opinion author in particular serves as a source cue that conditions individual agreement with court decisions—even those that run counter to an individual's expressed policy preferences (Boddery and Yates ). In the section that follows, we build on these insights to lay out an account that describes how the attribution of a U.S. Supreme Court decision on a case affects the public's feelings about that decision.…”