Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T09:49:28.520Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Bad Attitudes: The Consequences of Survey Research for Constitutional Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Abstract

Following World War II, survey researchers taught a generation of Americans that ordinary people were not to be trusted on fundamental rights because their attitudes were reactionary, intolerant, and generally bad. The article examines this research and its influence on constitutional politics. It proposes that this attitude perspective fostered elite domination in matters of fundamental right and an orientation away from economic rights. The article also suggests that by turning from public opinion to public knowledge we may reclaim a democratic constitutional practice.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1990

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

1. Stouffer, Samuel, Communism, Conformity, and Civil Liberties (New York: Doubleday, 1955).Google Scholar

2. Shapiro, Martin, “The Supreme Court's ‘Return’ to Economic Regulation,” Studies in American Political Development (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986).Google Scholar

3. Jacobs, Lawrence R. and Shapiro, Robert Y., “Public Opinion and the New Social History: Lessons for the Study of Public Opinion and Democratic Policy-Making,” Social Science History 13 (1989): 124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Houseman, Gerald L., “Civil Liberties and the American People: Toward an Understanding of a Lack of Understanding,” Research in Law and Policy Studies 2 (1988): 199218.Google Scholar

5. Adorno, T. W. et al. , The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper and Bros., 1950).Google Scholar

6. Allport, G. W., The Nature of Prejudice (Boston: Beacon Press, 1954), p. 274.Google Scholar

7. Stouffer, , Communism, p. 15.Google Scholar

8. The dramatic impact of The American Voter, ed. Converse, Philip E., Miller, Warren E., and Stokes, Donald E. (New York: Wiley, 1960),Google Scholar on the conception of productive political science was to make prediction of a public's propensity to choose one way rather than another on a narrow range of issues an important focus of research.

9. Stouffer, , Communism, p. 274.Google Scholar

10. Ibid., p. 26.

11. Ibid., p. 236.

12. McClosky, Herbert, “Consensus and Ideology in American Politics,” American Political Science Review 58 (1964): 361–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. Gibson, James L. and Bingham, Richard D., “Skokie, Nazis, and the Elitist Theory of Democracy,” Western Political Quarterly 33 (1983): 3347;Google Scholar and Civil Liberties and Nazis: The Skokie Free-Speech Controversy (New York: Praeger, 1985).Google Scholar

14. Sullivan, John L. et al. , Political Tolerance and American Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982);Google Scholar but see Jackman, Robert W., “Political Elites, Mass Publics, and Support for Democratic Liberties,” Journal of Politics 34 (1972): 753–73;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Much Ado About Nothing,” Journal of Politics 39 (1977): 185–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. Ginsberg, Benjamin, The Captive Public: How Mass Opinion Promotes State Power (New York: Basic Books, 1986);Google Scholar Paul Sniderman et al., “The Fallacy of Democratic Elitism: Elite Competition and Commitment to Civil Liberties” (Paper delivered to the Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, Madison, Wisconsin, 1989).

16. McClosky, Herbert and Brill, Alida, Dimensions of Tolerance: What Americans Believe about Civil Liberties (New York: Russell Sage, 1983).Google Scholar

17. Gibson and Bingham, Civil Liberties and Nazis, p. 12.Google Scholar

18. David Barnum and John L. Sullivan, “The Measurement and Comprehension of Opinion-Policy Linkages on Civil Liberties Issues” (Paper delivered to the Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, Madison, Wisconsin, 1989).

19. Ibid.

20. Sullivan et al., Political Tolerance.

21. Ibid., p. 8.

22. Ibid., p. 251.

23. Truman, David, The Governmental Process (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1951).Google Scholar

24. Kesselman, Mark, “Conflictual Evolution of American Political Science,” in Public Values and Private Power in American Politics, ed. Greenstone, J. David (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).Google Scholar

25. McConnell, Grant, Decline of Agrarian Democracy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953).Google Scholar

26. Oilman, Bertell, “Marxism and Political Science: Prolegomenon to a Debate on Marx's Method,” Politics and Society 3 (1973): 491511;CrossRefGoogle ScholarBalbus, Isaac D., “Comment I,” Politics and Society 3 (1973): 511–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27. Mann, Michael, “The Social Cohesion of Liberal Democracy? American Sociological Review 35 (1970): 423–39. I am indebted to Alan Hunt of Carleton University for this reference.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28. Genovese, Eugene, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Vintage Books, 1974).Google Scholar

29. Gusfield, Joseph, The Culture of Public Problems (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1981).Google Scholar

30. Adamany, David and Grossman, Joel, “Support for the Supreme Court as a National Policy Maker,” Law and Polity 5 (1983): 405437.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31. Ibid., p. 409.

32. Ibid., p. 434.

33. Caldeira, Gregory, “The Supreme Court and Public Opinion,” Law and Society Review (1976).Google Scholar

34. Barnum, David G., “Decision-making in a Constitutional Democracy,” Journal of Politics 47 (1982): 480508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35. Gibson, and Bingham, , Civil Liberties and Nazis, p. 191.Google Scholar

36. Ibid.

37. As Joel Grossman pointed out to me in comments on an earlier draft of this article.

38. Brigham, John, The Cult of the Court (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), p. 214.Google Scholar

39. See also Johnson, Charles A. and Canon, Bradley C., Judicial Policies (Washington, D. C: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1984),Google Scholar for attention to the authoritative populations of “interpreters and implementers” who link elite positions to the Supreme Court.

40. Nagel, Robert F., Constitutional Culture: The Mentality and Consequences of Judicial Review (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), p. 1.Google Scholar

41. Marie Provine, note to the author. I am grateful for this commentary, although it cuts rather deeply into my analysis.

42. Tribe, Laurence, American Constitutional Law (Mineola, NY: Foundation Press, 1975), p. 1063.Google Scholar

43. Ibid., p. 1080.

44. Horowitz, Donald, The Courts and Public Policy (Washington, D. C: Brookings Institution, 1977).Google Scholar

45. Morgan, Richard E., Disabling America: The ‘Rights’ Industry in Our Time (New York: Basic Books, 1984).Google Scholar

46. Ibid., p. 5.

47. Berns, Walter, Taking the Constitution Seriously (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987);Google ScholarWolfe, Christopher, The Rise ofModem Judicial Review (New York: Basic Books, 1986).Google Scholar

48. This is part of a much larger psychological reorientation that began as the discipline matured in the early part of the twentieth century. At one time, the psychology of ownership, possession, and property were central to the discipline (Rudman, Floyd, “Psychology of Ownership, Possession, and Property: A Selected Bibliography Since 1890,” Psychological Reports 58 [1986]: 859–69).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49. Gibson, and Bingham, , Civil Liberties and Nazis, p. 19.Google Scholar

50. This is popularly described by Fred Friendly as “defending the thought that we hate” (Friendly, Fred and Elliot, Martha J., The Constitution: That Delicate Balance [New York: Random House, 1984]).Google Scholar

51. Sniderman et al., “Fallacy of Democratic Elitism”; Barnum and Sullivan, “The Measurement and Comprehension of Opinion-Policy Linkages on Civil Liberties Issues.”

52. Taylor, D. Garth, Public Opinion and Collective Action (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).Google Scholar

53. That is, to have a belief about something like whether wealth in America is unfairly distributed posits a relationship to the world while having an opinion about whether Communists should be allowed to speak does not say anything about the world.

54. Because the individual remains the unit of analysis.

55. Hochschild, Jennifer, What's Fair? American Beliefs about Distributive Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 29.Google Scholar

56. Ibid., p. 150.

57. Paradoxically, given its sensitivity to silenced voices.

58. Bennett, W. Lance, Public Opinion in American Politics (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1980), p. 124;Google ScholarPiven, Frances Fox and Cloward, Richard A., Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (New York: Vintage Books, 1971), p. 169.Google Scholar

59. Elman, Richard M., The Poorhouse State: The American Way of Life on Public Assistance (New York: Pantheon, 1966).Google Scholar

60. Richard Elman's ethnographic study of the lower east side of Manhattan, Poorhouse State, and my research in Chico, California, and Holyoke, Massachusetts, are the basis for describing the public's property.

61. (New York: Vintage, 1985).

62. (Philadelphia: Temple University press, 1986).

63. (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1990).

64. (Lexington, KY: D. C. Heath, 1987).

65. Merry, Getting justice & Getting Even; and Everyday Understanding of Law in Working Class America,” American Ethnologist 13 (1986): 253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

66. Brigham, John, Property and the Politics of Entitlement (Philadelphia: Temple University press, 1990).Google Scholar

67. Nagel, , Constitutional Culture, p. 5.Google Scholar

68. In The Civil Rights Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University press, 1988), Kristin Bumiller builds on critical legal scholarship to indicate some problems with this framework.Google Scholar

69. McAuliffe v. Mayor of New Bedford, 155 MA 216 (1892).Google Scholar

70. Steward Machine Co. v. Davis 301 US 393 (1922).Google Scholar

71. Reich, Charles, “The New Property,” Yale Law Journal 73 (1964): 733–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

72. Nagel, Constitutional Culture; Brigham, Cult of the Court.

73. O'Neil, T.J., “The Language of Equality in a Constitutional OrderAmerican Political Science Review 75 (1981): 626–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

74. Strauber, I. L., “Transforming Political Rights into Legal Ones,” Polity 16 (1983): 7296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

75. Tribe, , American Constitutional Law, p. 256.Google Scholar

76. Elman, , Poorhouse State, p. 77.Google Scholar

77. Ibid., p. 11.

78. “Praxis” was described in terms of the seeming irrationality of the legal system in the late Middle Ages. An account by Douglas Hay, interpreting attempts to put the legal system on a more secure footing by making punishment sure and efficient, points out the advantage of die pardons, the grace controlled by the gentry, as an affirmation of their hegemony.

79. Respondent, W., Disabled and the Law, Chico, CA, 20 June 1988.

80. Respondent, J., Welfare Department, Holyoke, MA, 28 July 1988.

81. Flyer dated 2–6–89 on file with the author.

82. Sniderman et al., “Fallacy of Democratic Elitism.”

83. Ibid., p. 9. Such as freedom of assembly and public safety on occasion.

84. The attitude perspective is similar to the “many voices” framework of some contemporary interpretive research on law analyzed by Catharine A. MacKinnon (MacKinnon, , Feminism Unmodified [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987], pp. 3537).Google Scholar

85. The word itself reflects an earlier professional movement to make cleanliness a standard of social acceptability.