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Second-Order Evaluations of the European Court of Human Rights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2022

Linda Camp Keith ,
Banks Miller  and
Rachel McGuire
Linda Camp Keith*
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Dallas
Banks Miller
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Dallas
*
Contact the corresponding author, Linda Keith, at [email protected].
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Abstract

Scholars have found that citizens tend to evaluate European institutions in light of how they feel about their own domestic institutions (second-order evaluations). We argue that this approach is more appropriate for understanding international courts than is the legitimacy approach of the law and courts literature. While studies applying the second-order evaluations approach have overwhelmingly focused on EU institutions, here we seek to determine whether second-order evaluations are also characteristic of citizens’ opinions about the European Court of Human Rights. We evaluate our hypotheses using a sample of the British population and find strong support for the general second-order evaluation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Law and Courts , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , Spring 2015 , pp. 67 - 93
Copyright
© 2015 by Law and Courts Organized Section of the American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.

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Footnotes

We would like to thank the anonymous referees and David Klein for their help in improving our work. A previous version of this manuscript was presented at the Southern Political Science Association Conference, where we also received valuable feedback. Finally, we would like to thank Harold Clarke, who generously made room on the British Election Study available to us.

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