The Political Party Basis of Attitudes Toward the Supreme Court

Dolbeare, Kenneth M.; Hammond, Phillip E.

doi:10.1086/267576

Cited by 53 publications

(23 citation statements)

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“…The few exceptions are worth noting. In one early study, Dolbeare and Hammond (1968) find the party of the president is a powerful determinant of public support for the Court's institutional integrity, such as whether the Court should be subject to reform (but see Casey, 1975). More recently, Hansford and Nicholson (2012) examine the variation in public acceptance of policy decisions.…”

Section: Source Cues and Public Support For Courtsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Source Cues and Public Support for the Supreme Court

Clark

Kastellec

2015

American Politics Research

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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

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Section: Source Cues and Public Support For Courtsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Source Cues and Public Support for the Supreme Court

Clark

Kastellec

2015

American Politics Research

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“…Partisanship and ideology influence Senate votes on controversial nominees (Cameron, Cover, and Segal 1990; Felice and Weisberg 1988-89;Massaro 1990;Segal, Cameron, and Cover 1992) as well as public approval for the Court and its decisions (Caldeira 1991;Casey 1976;Dolbeare and Hammond 1968;Kessel 1966;Murphy andTanenhaus 1968, 1990). Republicans and conservatives should therefore be more likely than Democrats and liberals to support the Reagan/Bush Supreme Court nominees.…”

Section: Opinion-holding and Nominee Evaluationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The connection between presidents and nominees, then, in addition to the fact that public support for the Court is associated with support for the president (Dolbeare and Hammond 1968;Caldeira 1986;Caldeira and Gibson 1992), leads us to hypothesize that approval of the president will be positively associated with approval of Court nominees.…”

Section: Presidential Associationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Americans play no direct role in the selection process and know very little about the operations of the Court. Only small portions of the public can identify members of the Court, and most of its decisions do not capture public attention (Dolbeare and Hammond 1968;Kessel 1966;Murphy andTanenhaus 1968, 1990). In addition, the selection process has historically been a low salience affair, with Supreme Court nominees being debated almost entirely within elite circles.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Opinion-Holding and Public Attitudes Toward Controversial Supreme Court Nominees

Gimpel

Wolpert

1996

Political Research Quarterly

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This article explores the basis of opinion formation and public attitudes toward recent Supreme Court nominees. The high salience of several recent Court nominations has transformed the selection process from an elite affair to one with a popular dimension. We develop a model of opinion-holding in response to the Rehnquist, Bork, Souter, and Thomas nominations. We find that education and having an opinion about the president are strongly associated with opinion-holding about the nominees. We also find that presidential approval, party identification and ideology are all highly related to approval of the nominees. The influence of age, race, and gender on opinion-holding and evaluation tends to vary with the nomination. Of particular interest is the strong link we find between presidential evaluation and nominee evaluation. Presidents serve as important cues for those who have opinions about Court nominees. This article focuses on two questions. First, what accounts for the formation of attitudes or opinions about Supreme Court nominees? Second, what factors explain public approval or disapproval of nominees? These questions have received virtually no scholarly attention (but see Caldeira and Smith 1993) and very little is known about the popular dimension of the judicial selection process.Prior research generates contradictory hypotheses about whether the American public closely scrutinizes Supreme Court nominees. On the one hand, we might expect Americans to pay close attention to Court nominees. After all, the Supreme Court is a significant policymaking institution. A wide variety of disputes come before the

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“…However, the relationship does not seem to work in the other direction. In general, the Court seems to have little public visibility, even when controversial issues are involved in cases (Giles, 1973;Dolbeare and Hammond, 1968;Dolbeare, 1967;Murphy and Tanenhaus, 1968). Brown argues that public opinion does not significantly alter most decisions of either trial or higher courts except under conditions of high public anxiety and high level of media attention.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Relationship Between Public Opinion and Supreme Court Decisions

Gaziano

1978

Communication Research

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The role and function of public sentiment and sanction in democratic theory assumes that there is a relationship between the law as expressed in Supreme Court decisions and public opinion. Aspects for support for this hypothesis are: (1) when fewer than four in ten members of the public approved of a broad guarantee of free speech the court restricted the First Amendment; (2) when fewer than four in ten members of the public supported the First Amendment. the court's decisions were much more likely to be close ones in either direction but especially when rulings were adverse to free speech; and (3) when a low level of public favor for free speech rights of extremists was rising, the Court was more likely to render decisions upholding the First Amendment even though less than 50% of the public supported free speech for political extremists.

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The Political Party Basis of Attitudes Toward the Supreme Court

Cited by 53 publications

References 0 publications

Source Cues and Public Support for the Supreme Court

Source Cues and Public Support for the Supreme Court

Opinion-Holding and Public Attitudes Toward Controversial Supreme Court Nominees

Relationship Between Public Opinion and Supreme Court Decisions

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