The Public's Conditional Response to Supreme Court Decisions

Abstract

To investigate the effect of the Supreme Court on public opinion, we offer the conditional response hypothesis based on a theory of Supreme Court legitimacy and a microlevel social-psychological theory of attitude formation. Together these theories predict that the Court may affect public opinion when it initially rules on a salient issue, but that subsequent decisions on the same issue will have little influence on opinion. To test our predictions, we analyze public opinion data before and after the Supreme Court ruled in a highly visible abortion case (Webster v. Reproductive Health Services [1989]) and before and after three key capital punishment rulings (Furman v. Georgia [1972], Gregg v. Georgia [1976], and McCleskey v. Kemp [1987]). The results suggest that our theory is not issue bound but is generally applicable to how the Supreme Court affects public opinion when it rules in highly salient cases.

PUBLIC OPINION REACTION TO REPEATED EVENTS: Citizen Response to Multiple Supreme Court Abortion Decisions

“…We make this choice in part because repeated Supreme Court decisions on an issue present an opportunity to see how a political actor's effect on public opinion evolves with repeated actions on an issue. We also choose to examine the influence of the Court because of its unique role in politics and the growing understanding of how the public reacts to the Court (Franklin and Kosaki, 1989;Johnson and Martin, 1998).…”

“…One model of how citizens respond to an issue moving on and off the public agenda, the Conditional Response Model (Johnson and Martin, 1998), suggests that the key determinant of how these agenda shifts affect citizens is the number of times an issue has been raised by a political actor. elaborating on his or her attitude, then the effect of this processing is stronger, longer lasting, and resistant to further processing.…”

Towards Tracking Political Sentiment through Microblog Data

“…If the Dahl's hypothesis is correct, then the Supreme Court's same-sex marriage decisions should have resulted in a measurable change in opinion. A primary finding about implication of Dahl's hypothesis is that the Court is polarizing, creating more supportive opinions of the policies it reviews among those who supported the policy before the decision and more negative opinions among those who opposed the policy prior to the decision (Franklin and Kosaki, 1989) (Johnson and Martin, 1998).…”

“…Political scientists have long been concerned with whether and how Supreme Court decisions affect public opinion and discourse about political topics (Hoekstra, 2003) (Johnson and Martin, 1998) (Gibson et al, 2003). Survey research on the subject has been limited in two ways.…”

Backlash or a Positive Response?: Public Opinion of LGB Issues After Obergefell v. Hodges

“…Thus, polarization occurs. For instance, following Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion, levels of opposition to abortion rose among Catholics (Franklin and Kosaki, 1989;Johnson and Martin, 1998). Likewise, following the decision that made sodomy laws unconstitutional (Lawrence v. Texas), women and liberals became more likely to support samesex relations (Stoutenborough, Haider-Markel, and Allen, 2006).…”