Hostname: page-component-7d684dbfc8-4nnqn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2023-09-26T06:37:08.693Z Has data issue: false Feature Flags: { "corePageComponentGetUserInfoFromSharedSession": true, "coreDisableEcommerce": false, "coreDisableSocialShare": false, "coreDisableEcommerceForArticlePurchase": false, "coreDisableEcommerceForBookPurchase": false, "coreDisableEcommerceForElementPurchase": false, "coreUseNewShare": true, "useRatesEcommerce": true } hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Justice Speaks, but Who's Listening?

Mass Public Awareness of US Supreme Court Cases

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2022

Matthew P. Hitt ,
Kyle L. Saunders  and
Kevin M. Scott
Matthew P. Hitt*
Affiliation:
Colorado State University
Kyle L. Saunders
Affiliation:
Colorado State University
Kevin M. Scott
Affiliation:
Bureau of Justice Statistics
*
Contact the corresponding author, Matthew P. Hitt, at matthew.hitt@colostate.edu.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We seek to measure the impact of decisions issued by the US Supreme Court on public awareness of its cases. We use a quasi-experimental design with the Court decisions as the stimulus of hypothesized public awareness change. We find that public awareness of cases varies according to individual differences: more educated, knowledgeable, and informationally motivated citizens are more likely to report awareness. Further, decision announcements increase awareness more generally, especially in cases of moderate salience. In contrast, for a very high salience case, awareness is high before and after the decision is announced, while, for a case fabricated by the investigators, “awareness” is not affected by the Court’s activities. The results suggest that while the public may eventually respond to the behavior of national institutions, this response is likely first filtered through an elite subset of the population.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Law and Courts , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , Spring 2019 , pp. 29 - 52
Copyright
© 2018 by the Law and Courts Organized Section of the American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.

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.)

Footnotes

The research reported in this article was supported by the National Science Foundation (SES-0519608). We thank the staff of the Indiana Survey Research Center, particularly John Kennedy and Dominic Powell, for assistance designing and executing the survey. We also thank Larry Baum, Matt Courser, Valerie Hoekstra, and Chris Zorn for valuable comments and conversations about this project. This article represents the views of the authors and not necessarily the views of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Office of Justice Programs, or the Department of Justice.

References

Achen, Christopher H. 1987. Statistical Analysis of Quasi-Experiments. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ai, Chunrong and Edward, C. Norton. 2003. “Interaction Terms in Logit and Probit Models.” Economics Letters 80 (1): 123–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arceneaux, Kevin and Martin, Johnson. 2013. Changing Minds or Changing Channels? Partisan News in an Age of Choice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartels, Brandon L. and Christopher, D. Johnston. 2013. “On the Ideological Foundations of Supreme Court Legitimacy in the American Public.” American Journal of Political Science 57 (1): 184–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baum, Matthew A. 2003. Soft News Goes to War: Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy in the New Media Age. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bennett, Stephen Earl. 1986. Apathy in America, 1960–1984: Causes and Consequences of Citizen Political Indifference. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Transnational.Google Scholar
Black, Ryan C., Ryan J. Owens, Justin Wedeking, and Patrick, C. Wohlfarth. 2016. U.S. Supreme Court Opinions and Their Audiences. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boudreau, Cheryl and Scott, A. MacKenzie. 2014. “Informing the Electorate? How Party Cues and Policy Information Affect Public Opinion about Initiatives.” American Journal of Political Science 58 (1): 48–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowman, Karlyn. 2004. “AEI Study on Homosexuality and Gay Marriage.” https://www.aei.org/press/aei-study-on-homosexuality-and-gay-marriage/.Google Scholar
Bullock, John G. 2011. “Elite Influence on Public Opinion in an Informed Electorate.” American Political Science Review 105 (3): 496–515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlson, Taylor N. 2018. “Modeling Political Information Transmission as a Game of Telephone.” Journal of Politics 80 (1): 348–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christenson, Dino P. and David, M. Glick. 2015. “Chief Justice Roberts’s Health Care Decision Disrobed: The Microfoundations of the Supreme Court’s Legitimacy.” American Journal of Political Science 59 (2): 403–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Tom S. 2009. “The Separation of Powers, Court-Curbing, and Judicial Legitimacy.” American Journal of Political Science 53 (4): 971–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Tom S. 2011. The Limits of Judicial Independence. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Clark, Tom S., Jeffrey, R. Lax and Douglas, Rice. 2015. “Measuring the Political Salience of Supreme Court Cases.” Journal of Law and Courts 3 (1): 37–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cook, Thomas D., and Donald, T. Campbell. 1979. Quasi-Experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues for Field Settings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Davis, Nicholas T., and Johanna, L. Dunaway. 2016. “Party Polarization, Media Choice, and Mass Partisan-Ideological Sorting.” Public Opinion Quarterly 80 (S1): 272–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Delli, Carpini, Michael, X., and Scott, Keeter. 1996. What Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Flemming, Roy B., John, Bohte, and Wood., B. Dan 1997. “One Voice among Many: The Supreme Court’s Influence on Attentiveness to Issues in the United States, 1947–92.” American Journal of Political Science 41 (3): 1224–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flores, Andrew R. and Scott, Barclay. 2016. “Backlash, Consensus, Legitimacy, or Polarization: The Effect of Same-Sex Marriage Policy on Mass Attitudes.” Political Research Quarterly 69 (1): 43–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franklin, Charles H., and Liane, C. Kosaki. 1989. “Republican Schoolmaster: The US Supreme Court, Public Opinion, and Abortion.” American Political Science Review 83:751–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franklin, Charles H. 1995. “Media, Knowledge, and Public Evaluations of the Supreme Court.” In Contemplating Courts, ed. Lee Epstein. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly.Google Scholar
Franklin, Charles H., Liane, C. Kosaki, and Herbert, M. Kritzer. 1993. “The Salience of Supreme Court Decisions.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, September.Google Scholar
Gibson, James L., and Gregory, A. Caldeira. 2009. Citizens, Courts, and Confirmations: Positivity Theory and the Judgments of the American People. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, James L., Gregory, A. Caldeira, and Lester, Kenyatta Spence. 2003. “The Supreme Court and the US Presidential Election of 2000: Wounds, Self-Inflicted or Otherwise?” British Journal of Political Science 33:535–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, James L., and Michael, J. Nelson. 2014. “The Legitimacy of the US Supreme Court: Conventional Wisdoms and Recent Challenges Thereto.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 10:201–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, James L., and Michael, J. Nelson. 2015. “Is the U.S. Supreme Court’s Legitimacy Grounded in Performance Satisfaction and Ideology?” American Journal of Political Science 59 (1): 162–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grosskopf, Anke and Jeffrey, J. Mondak. 1998. “Do Attitudes toward Specific Decisions Matter? The Impact of Webster and Texas v. Johnson on Public Confidence in the Supreme Court.” Political Research Quarterly 51:633–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hitt, Matthew P., and Kathleen, Searles. Forthcoming. “Media Coverage and Public Approval of the U.S. Supreme Court.” Political Communication.Google Scholar
Hoekstra, Valerie J. 2000. “The Supreme Court and Local Public Opinion.” American Political Science Review 94:89–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoekstra, Valerie J. 2003. Public Reaction to Supreme Court Decisions. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iyengar, Shanto. 1990. “Shortcuts to Political Knowledge: The Role of Selective Attention and Accessibility.” In Information and Democratic Processes, ed. Ferejohn, John A. and Kuklinski, James H., 160–85. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, Timothy R., and Andrew, D. Martin. 1998. “The Public’s Conditional Response to Supreme Court Decisions.” American Political Science Review 92:299–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnston, Christopher D., and Brandon, L. Bartels. 2010. “Sensationalism and Sobriety: Differential Media Exposure and Attitudes toward American Courts.” Public Opinion Quarterly 74 (2): 260–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaiser, Henry F. 1960. “The Application of Electronic Computers to Factor Analysis.” Educational and Psychological Measurement 20 (1): 141–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kritzer, Herbert M. 2005. “The American Public’s Assessment of the Rehnquist Court.” Judicature 89:168–76.Google Scholar
Layman, Geoffrey C. 2001. The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Linos, Katerina and Kimberly, Twist. 2016. “The Supreme Court, the Media, and Public Opinion: Comparing Experimental and Observational Methods.” Journal of Legal Studies 45 (2): 223–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lupia, Arthur. 2016. Uninformed: Why People Know So Little about Politics and What We Can Do about It. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lupia, Arthur and Matthew, D. McCubbins. 1998. The Democratic Dilemma. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mérola, Vittorio and Matthew, P. Hitt. 2016. “Numeracy and the Persuasive Effect of Policy Information and Party Cues.” Public Opinion Quarterly 80 (2): 554–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mondak, Jeffrey J., and Shannon, Ishiyama Smithey. 1997. “The Dynamics of Public Support for the Supreme Court.” Journal of Politics 59:1114–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Niemi, Richard G., John, Mueller, and Tom, W. Smith. 1989. Trends in Public Opinion: A Compendium of Survey Data. New York: Greenwood.Google Scholar
Prior, Markus. 2013. “Media and Political Polarization.” Annual Review of Political Science 16:101–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, Kevin M., and Kyle, L. Saunders. 2006. “Courting Public Opinion: Supreme Court Impact on Public Opinion Reconsidered.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, April 19–22.Google Scholar
Slotnick, Eliot E., and Jennifer, A. Segal. 1998. Television News and the Supreme Court: All the News That’s Fit to Air? New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sniderman, Paul. 1993. “A New Look in Public Opinion Research.” In Political Science: The State of the Discipline II, ed. Ada W. Finifter, 211–29. Washington, DC: American Political Science Association.Google Scholar
Sniderman, Paul, Brody, Richard and Philip, Tetlock. 1991. Reasoning and Choice: Explorations in Political Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spill, Rorie and Zoe, Oxley. 2003. “Philosopher Kings or Political Actors? How the Media Portray the Supreme Court.” Judicature 78:22–29.Google Scholar
Ura, Joseph Daniel. 2014. “Backlash and Legitimation: Macro Political Responses to Supreme Court Decisions.” American Journal of Political Science 58 (1): 110–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zaller, John R. 1992. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zilis, Michael A. 2015. The Limits of Legitimacy: Dissenting Opinions, Media Coverage, and Public Responses to Supreme Court Decisions. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar