Chapter 3 describes in detail the data sources and research designs used throughout the book, including observational data sources, experiments on national samples of American citizens, and panel surveys tracking the same people over time. It also summarizes aggregate public opinion on key variables through time, including approval, confidence, trust, procedural perceptions, and broadly targeted and narrowly targeted Court-curbing. The chapter concludes that the Court’s “reservoir of goodwill” within the American public is not as deep or wide as many scholars suggest.

Chapter 7 examines how disagreement with the general ideological direction of the Court, as well as disagreement with specific rulings, impacts citizens’ perceptions of the Court’s decision-making procedures. It argues that citizens use these perceptions to rationalize support for Court-curbing when they dislike the Court’s rulings or general policy direction. In observational and experimental data, the chapter finds a strong association between policy disagreement and perceptions that the Court is politicized and its decisions shaped by partisan and ideological interests. The chapter also finds that political engagement generally increases the impact of policy disagreement on procedural perceptions.