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Compensation and Compliance: Sources of Public Acceptance of the U.K. Supreme Court's Brexit Decision

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Ezequiel Gonzalez-Ocantos  and
Elias Dinas
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Abstract

The perception that a high court's decision is binding and final is a crucial prerequisite for its ability to settle political conflicts. Under what conditions are citizens more likely to accept controversial judicial rulings? Mass acceptance is determined, in part, by how rulings are framed during public debate. This paper takes a broad view of the strategies and actors that influence the discursive environment surrounding judgments, calling attention to hitherto unexamined determinants of mass acceptance. We theorize that third parties can boost acceptance by pledging compliance, and that courts can moderate opposition by compensating losers. We also look at how populist attacks on judiciaries, common in contemporary democracies, affect acceptance. We test these propositions using a survey experiment conducted in the aftermath of the UK Supreme Court's Brexit decision, the most salient judgment handed down by this court to date. The paper moves the literature on courts and public opinion beyond the United States, and presents evidence backing largely untested assumptions at the heart of models of judicial behavior regarding the benefits of crafting rulings with an eye on the preferences of key audiences.

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Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , September 2019 , pp. 889 - 919
Copyright
© 2019 Law and Society Association.

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