Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T20:40:31.340Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Public's Conditional Response to Supreme Court Decisions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Timothy R. Johnson  and
Andrew D. Martin
Timothy R. Johnson
Affiliation:
Southern Illinois University-Carbondale
Andrew D. Martin
Affiliation:
State University of New Yorkat Stony Brook
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 92 , Issue 2 , June 1998 , pp. 299 - 309
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Adamany, David. 1973. “Legitimacy, Realigning Elections, and the Supreme Court.” Wisconsin Law Review 1973(3):790–846.Google Scholar
Adamany, David, and Grossman, Joel. 1983. “Support for the Supreme Court as a National Policy Maker.” In American Court Systems: Readings in Judicial Process and Behavior, ed. Goldman, Sheldon and Sarat, Austin. New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health. 1983. 462 U.S. 416.Google Scholar
Caldeira, Gregory A. 1986. “Neither the Purse nor the Sword: Dynamics of Public Confidence in the Supreme Court.” American Political Science Review 80(December):1209–60.Google Scholar
Caldeira, Gregory, and Gibson, James L.. 1992. “The Etiology of Public Support for the Supreme Court.” American Journal of Political Science 36(August):635–64.Google Scholar
CBS News/New York Times. 1989a. CBS News/New York Times Monthly Poll, April 1989 [computer file] (Study #9234). ICPSR version. Ann Arbor, MI: CBS/News/New York Times [producers], 1989. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1990.Google Scholar
CBS News/New York Times. 1989b. CBS News/New York Times Abortion Polls, September–October 1989 [computer file] (Study #9234). ICPSR version. Ann Arbor, MI: CBS News [producer]. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1991.Google Scholar
Chaiken, Shelly. 1980. “Heuristic versus systematic information processing and the use of source message cues in persuasion.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39(November):752–66.Google Scholar
Dahl, Robert. 1957. “Decision Making in a Democracy: The Supreme Court as a National Policy Maker.” Journal of Public Law 6(Fall):279–95.Google Scholar
Davis, James A., and Smith, Tom W.. 1994. General Social Survey, 1972–1994 [machine-readable data file] (Study #6492). ICPSR version. Chicago, IL: National Opinion Research Center [producer]. Storrs, CT: The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut [distributor], 1994.Google Scholar
Epstein, Lee, and Kobylka, Joseph. 1992. The Supreme Court and Legal Change: Abortion and the Death Penalty. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Epstein, Lee, and Walker, Thomas. 1995. Constitutional Law for a Changing America: Rights, Liberties, and Justice. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press.Google Scholar
Fiske, Susan, and Taylor, Shelly. 1991. Social Cognition. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Franklin, Charles, and Kosaki, Liane. 1989. “Republican Schoolmaster: The U.S. Supreme Court, Public Opinion and Abortion.” American Political Science Review 83(September):751–71.Google Scholar
Furman v. Georgia. 1972. 408 U.S. 238.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Christopher. 1993. The Impact of Churches on Political Behavior. Westport, CT: Greenwood.Google Scholar
Greene, William. 1993. Econometric Analysis. 2d ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Gregg v. Georgia. 1976. 428 U.S. 153.Google Scholar
Hoekstra, Valerie, and Segal, Jeffrey. 1996. “The Shepherding of Local Public Opinion: The Supreme Court and Lamb's Chapel.” Journal of Politics 58(November):1079–102.Google Scholar
Huckfeldt, Robert, and Sprague, John. 1995. Citizens, Contexts, and Social Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kmenta, Jan. Elements of Econometrics. 1986. 2d ed. New York: MacMillan.Google Scholar
Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District. 1993. 124 L.Ed. 2d 352.Google Scholar
McCleskey v. Kemp. 1987. 481 U.S. 279.Google Scholar
McKelvey, Richard, and Zavoina, William. 1975. “A Statistical Model for the Analysis of Ordinal Level Dependent Variables.” Journal of Mathematical Sociology 4(Summer):103–20.Google Scholar
Melton, Gordon. 1989. The Churches Speak on Capital Punishment: Official Statements from Religious Bodies and Ecumenical Organizations. New York: Gale Research.Google Scholar
Petty, Richard, and Cacioppo, John. 1981. Attitudes and Persuaison: Classic and Contemporary Approaches. Dubuque, IA: Wm. C. Brown.Google Scholar
Petty, Richard, and Krosnick, Jon A.. 1995. Attitude Strength: Antecedents and Consequences. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Roe v. Wade. 1973. 410 U.S. 113.Google Scholar
Slotnick, Elliot, Segal, Jennifer, and Campoli, Lisa. 1994. “Television News and the Supreme Court: Correlates of Decisional Coverage.” Presented at the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association, New York.Google Scholar
Webster v. Reproductive Health Services. 1989. 492 U.S. 490.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.