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Public Opinion and the United States Supreme Court: Mapping of Some Prerequisites for Court Legitimation of Regime Changes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Walter F. Murphy  and
Joseph Tanenhaus
Walter F. Murphy
Affiliation:
Princeton University
Joseph Tanenhaus
Affiliation:
University of Iowa
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Any relatively stable polity must possess means for converting many, if not most, demands made on political authorities into satisfying outputs, whether material or symbolic. Failure to cope with pressing demands might lead to a severely dysfunctional loss of public support for particular officials as well as for the regime itself. On the other hand, efforts to meet demands through blatant violations of accepted rules can also cause great loss in public support.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , May 1968 , pp. 357 - 384
Copyright
Copyright © 1968 by the Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

Authors' Note: We are indebted to the National Science Foundation for financial support and to Dr. H. R. Rodgers of Iowa and Professor E. R. Tufts of Princeton for assistance and advice. This paper—which was commissioned for inclusion in the forthcoming volume, Frontiers of Judicial Research (J. B. Grossman and J. Tanenhaus, eds., 1968)—is printed here with the kind permission of John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

References

1. Our conceptual framework owes much to D. Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (1965). According to Easton, “political community” implies “at the very least that the members of the system show some minimal readiness or ability to continue working together to solve their political problems” (id. at 172). “Political regime” consists of three components: values and principles, norms or rules of the game, and structure or authority roles (id. at 190-211). “Political authorities” are the people who occupy the authority roles at any given time (id. at 212-19). In this report, we have equated “regime” with “rules of the game,” and have used “public officials” and “government officials” as synonyms for “political authorities.”

2. The literature on constitutional courts and judicial review is enormous. Access to contemporary journal materials published in countries other than the United States, the British Isles, and the British Commonwealth is facilitated by the comprehensive Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals (London: Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, 1964 to date). Only a tiny handful of writings can be cited in this note. They include the following:

E. McWhinney, Judicial Review in the English-Speaking World (rev. ed. 1965);

S. V. Linares Quintana, Tratado de la Ciencia del Derecho Constitucional Argentino y Comprado (9 vols., Buenos Aires: Editorial Alfa, 1956-63);

Das Bundesverfassuncscericht (Karlsruhe: C. F. Müller, 1963);

U. Torgersen, The Role of the Supreme Court in the Norwegian Political System, in Judicial Decision-Making (Glendon Schubert ed. 1963);

J. M. Maki, Court and Constitution in Japan: Selected Supreme Court Decisions, 1948-1960 (1964);

C. G. Haines, The American Doctrine of Judicial Supremacy (rev. ed. 1932);

W. F. Murphy, Congress and the Court (1962);

L. Sanchez Agesta, La Funcion Constitucional del Juez. Las interpretaciones del modelo Americano y su posible vigencia en Espana (Madrid: Real Academia de Jurisprudencia y Legislacion, 1967);

J. Tanenhaus, Judicial Review, in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (1968).

Analyses of the constitutional courts in Switzerland, Japan, Australia, West Germany, and the United States will be included in Frontiers of Judicial Research (J. B. Grossman & J. Tanenhaus eds. 1968).

3. We wish to thank the Social Science Research Council for the financial assistance which made these reinterviews possible.

4. K. M. Dolbeare, The Public Views the Supreme Court, in Law, Politics, and the Federal Courts (H. Jacob ed. 1967).

5. In September of 1949, the Gallup Poll asked two separate national samples an open-ended question which required even less knowledge: “Will you tell me what the highest court of law in the United States is called,” 17.3 per cent of the first, and 13.6 per cent of the second said they did not know or offered obviously incorrect answers.

6. W. F. Murphy & J. Tanenhaus, Public Opinion and the Supreme Court: The Goldwater Campaign, 32 Pub. Opinion Q. 31 (1968). For a general analysis of Senator Goldwater's campaign, see S. Kelley, Jr., The Presidential Campaign, in The National Election of 1964 (M. Cummings ed. 1966).

7. Slight differences between these data and those contained in two of our earlier reports result from additional cleaning of the data. We should point out that minor coding errors continue to turn up. The earlier reports referred to are Public Opinion and the Supreme Court of the United States: A Preliminary Report, Revista Española de la Opinión Público (forthcoming) and Constitutional Courts, Public Opinion, and Political Representation, a paper presented to the 1967 meetings of the International Political Science Association, which will be published in an abridged version in Modern American Democracy (M. N. Danielson & W. F. Murphy eds. 1968).

8. See the enlightening essay by P. E. Converse, The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics, in Ideology and Discontent 207 (D. E. Apter ed. 1964).

9. Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961); Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U.S. 478 (1964); Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963).

10. Murphy & Tanenhaus, supra note 6.

11. Dolbeare reports similar findings from a Wisconsin survey; supra note 4.

12. We do not intend to suggest that awareness of a court's constitutional authority is in itself evidence that a person approves of this role or that he is prepared to accept its consequences.

13. Cf. J. Wahlke, Public Policy and Representative Government: The Role of the Represented (a paper presented to the 1967 meetings of the International Political Science Association, Brussels).

14. Easton, supra note 1, at 159-61, discusses these concepts at great length. He also distinguishes between overt and covert support. The former refers to observable behavior and the latter to attitudes and predispositions.

15. The functional relationships can be expressed in the regression equation: X36 = .118 (X3) + .130 (X4) + .196 (X5) + .322 (X9) + .052 (X18) + 1.692. Our reasons for using regression coefficients rather than standard partials (beta weights) appear in the appendix.

16. See Murphy and Tanenhaus, supra note 6.

17. The regression equation makes the relationships clear: X36 = —.456(X1) + (—.080) (X21) + (—.061) (X22) + (—.066) (X23) + (—1.876) (X24) + 8.291.

18. See Murphy and Tanenhaus, supra note 6.

19. Causal model analysis might, of course, lead to somewhat different interpretations here and elsewhere in this report, but our work has not yet progressed far enough to enable us to define and evaluate alternative causal models.

20. We consider this scale of diffuse support especially inelegant and tentative.

21. As previously reported, the regression equation for specific support is X36 = .118 (X3) + .130 (X4) + .196 (X5) + .322 (X9) + .052 (X18) + 1.692. The comparable equation for diffuse support is X30 = .233 (X3) + .102 (X4) + .105 (X5) + .106 (X9) + .112 (X18) + 0.378.

22. The functional relationships can be expressed as X25A = .217 (X3) + .212 (X4) + .242 (X5) + .528 (X9) + .170 (X18) —1.462.

23. The equations are computed to facilitate comparison for two groups of respondents of the impact on a dependent variable of each of a set of independent variables. Thus, in the first equation below, a unit increase in the mean value of independent variable X3 will result in a mean increase of .233 in the dependent variable diffuse support (X30) for all respondents. When only aware respondents are analyzed, as in the second equation below, a unit increase in the mean value of X3 will cause a mean increase of .250 in diffuse support. One can then readily detect the similarities and differences between all respondents with diffuse support scores on the one hand, and those who are aware of the Court's work and constitutional role on the other.

Policy Issues Cluster Items

All diffuse support respondents (N = 911)—X30 = .233 (X3) + .102 (X4) + .105 (X5) + .106 (X9) + .112 (X18) + 0.378.

Aware respondents only (N = 349)—X30 = .250 (X3) + .155 (X4) + .046 (X5) + .137 (X9) + .160 (X18) + 0.262.

Party Cluster Items

All diffuse support respondents—X30 = —.023 (X10) + .870 (X12) + .148 (X16) + 0.953.

Aware respondents only—X30 = .005 (X10) + 1.026 (X12) + .222 (X16) + 0.387.

Demographic Cluster Items

All diffuse support respondents—X30 = —.561 (X1) + (—.115) (X21) + (—.034) (X22) + .142 (X23) + (—1.044) (X24) + 5.118.

Aware respondents only—X30 = —.645 (X1) + (—.140) (X21) + (—.060) (X22) + .138 (X23) + (—1.715) (X24) + 6.299.