Throughout our narrative we have documented at many junctures that the Supreme Court is a uniquely invisible institution in the eyes of the American public both in a relative as well as in an absolute sense. As Gregory Caldeira notes, numerous studies have demonstrated that “there is only a shallow reservoir of knowledge about … the Court in the mass public. … Few … fulfill the most minimal prerequisites of the role of a knowledgeable and competent citizen vis-à-vis the Court” (1986: 1211). At any given moment if the average American were queried about any decisions the Court had rendered in its current or past term, the questioner would likely come up largely empty. Considerable research documents “that many Americans little recognize or little remember the Court's rulings. On open-ended questions that probe for specific likes or dislikes about Court rulings, only about half (or fewer) … can offer an opinion on even the most prominent Supreme Court decisions” (Marshall, 1989:143). The lack of public information about the Court extends beyond its decisions, per se, to a similar lack of familiarity with the justices who comprise the Court. Thus, in one study, fewer than 10 percent of the public could name the Chief Justice of the United States while, somewhat ironically, more than a quarter of the populace could recognize the name of Judge Wapner of the People's Court television fame (Morin, 1989).