Chapter 5 examines the effect of disagreement with specific Supreme Court ruling on support for both narrowly and broadly targeted Court-curbing. The chapter presents results from a national panel survey with waves surrounding some of the most important rulings in the contemporary era, including 2012’s health care ruling (NFIB v. Sebelius, upholding the Affordable Care Act), 2013’s rulings on the Voting Rights Act (Shelby County) and same-sex marriage (Windsor), and 2015’s landmark ruling declaring a constitutional right to same-sex marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges). The results demonstrate that citizens’ support for Court-curbing changes as a function of agreement and disagreement with salient rulings. The chapter also demonstrates that right-wing citizens are consistently more supportive of Court-curbing throughout the 2012–2016 period, suggesting that blockbuster liberal rulings during this period have had a substantial impact on mass perceptions of the Court’s ideological tenor. We also report the results from two original national survey experiments which show that the effect of policy disagreement is larger for narrow than broad Court-curbing.

Chapter 6 examines how partisan polarization reduces citizens’ willingness to defend the Supreme Court from curbing attacks. The chapter focuses on two national survey experiments which randomly assign respondents to polarized or unpolarized conditions in the context of a salient Supreme Court ruling. While disagreement with Court decisions always increases support for curbing the Court, the effect of disagreement is substantially larger in polarized relative to unpolarized conditions. The chapter demonstrates that the polarization effect is not due to mere partisan branding and that disagreement with specific decisions has a larger impact on support for narrow than broad curbing.

Chapter 2 develops a policy-based theory of public support for Court-curbing, which represents an alternative to process-based perspectives popular in the literature. The chapter distinguishes “broadly targeted Court-curbing,” or support for attacks on the institution’s powers and independence, from “narrowly targeted Court-curbing,” or support for attacks on the Court’s specific rulings. While disagreement with the general ideological direction of the Supreme Court strongly impacts support for broadly targeted Court-curbing, disagreement with specific rulings has a larger effect on narrowly targeted curbing. The theory also explains how and why partisan polarization reduces citizens’ willingness to defend the Court and discusses competing perspectives for how citizens’ level of political engagement moderates the effect of policy disagreement.

Chapter 4 presents several empirical tests of the effect of general policy disagreement on citizen support for broadly targeted Court-curbing, using national surveys from 2005, 2011, and 2012. The results indicate that general policy disagreement significantly increases support for broadly targeted Court-curbing with an effect size comparable to the impact of other key predictors, such as support for democratic values (rule of law, tolerance) and political engagement. While political engagement decreases support for Court-curbing, it does not moderate the effect of general policy disagreement.

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 8 concludes with a summary and synthesis of the book’s findings. It discusses the book’s implications for theories of public support for courts, and situates the book within the broader literature on public opinion and political institutions. The chapter anticipates and responds to criticisms of the book’s theoretical and empirical sections, and explores broader implications for the Court’s independence and power within the American political system.

Chapter 1 sets the scholarly and popular context for explaining how citizens evaluate the United States Supreme Court. It conceptualizes the core outcome of interest throughout the book: public support for Court-curbing, or alterations to the Supreme Court’s powers, structures, and institutional arrangements. We compare this concept to judicial independence and judicial power, and we distinguish it from institutional legitimacy. Chapter 1 also makes important connections to the institutions literature, explaining how a politicized foundation to Court-curbing represents a constraint on judicial independence. We characterize core debates in the scholarly literature centering on “policy (or outcome) versus process.” Policy-based perspectives posit that citizen agreement or disagreement with the Court’s rulings or policy direction will influence support for Court-curbing. Process-based perspectives suggest that non-policy factors such as democratic values, perceptions that the Court is fair and impartial (as opposed to politicized), and knowledge and awareness (via a “positivity bias”) all serve to enhance institutional support for the Court.

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.