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The Supreme Court and Myth: An Empirical Investigation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Gregory Casey
Gregory Casey*
Affiliation:
University of Missouri—Columbia
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The mass public is often depicted as indifferent to and unaware of many facets of political life which elites deem essential to understanding the political process (Converse, 1964: 209-14, 231-41; Key, 1964: 182-85, 199-202). Yet despite its indifference to political reality as defined by elites, the general public does hold its own version of political reality - albeit a more emotional, more symbolic, and less concrete reality than elites view (Prothro and Grigg, 1960: 276-94; Edelman, 1967: 1-7, 12-19, 178-81; Berger and Luckmann, 1966: 31-34). Popular perceptions of the United States Supreme Court follow this pattern: on the one hand, most observers take for granted that the public appreciates the Court on a symbolic or mythical plane while, on the other hand, most research concludes that the masses lack factual information on this institution.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , Spring 1974 , pp. 385 - 419
Copyright
Copyright © The Law and Society Association, 1974.

Footnotes

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I would like to express gratitude to the Graduate Research Council of the University of Missouri-Columbia, whose financial support made possible the survey which generated the data analyzed in this paper; to Professors David C. Leege of the University of Illinois-Chicago Circle and Sarah L. Boggs of the University of Missouri-St. Louis, both formerly of the University of Missouri-Columbia, for their assistance in questionnaire design and coding problems; and to Professors Roger E. Durand, Herbert K. Tillema and Dean L. Yarwood of the University of Missouri-Columbia, and Professor Michael W. Mansfield of Baylor University, for their helpful comments on previous drafts of this paper.

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