The Gender Gap in Supreme Court Legitimacy

• Published date: 01 November 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X231168353
• Author: Christopher Krewson,Jean Reith Schroedel
• Date: 01 November 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

American Politics Research

2023, Vol. 51(6) 781–795

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X231168353

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The Gender Gap in Supreme Court

Legitimacy

Christopher Krewson

1

and Jean Reith Schroedel

2

Abstract

Men and women diverge in their political behavior and attitudes. We test whether gender-based variation in political attitudes

extends to perceptions of US Supreme Court legitimacy. Using a dataset covering the years 2012–2017, we show that one ’s

identif‌ication as a man or a woman predicts their diffuse support for the Court. In particular, wom en almost always extend less

legitimacy to the Court than men do. This is true within both Republican and Democratic identif‌iers, and regression analysi s

shows the gender gap holds when controlling for partisanship, ideology, race, age, education, income, and Supreme Court

approval. Additionally, we included a series of questions in a 2021 Cooperative Election Study (CES) module to explore why the

gender gap in perceived legitimacy exists. We f‌ind that differences in perceptions of the Court’s representation of women and

its fairness drive the gender gap in legitimacy.

Keywords

supreme court, legitimacy, gender, public opinion

Justices of the United States Supreme Court must persuade

presidents, members of Congress, and the public to accept

Court decisions as authoritative and binding, even in the face

of potential disagreement with the policy implications of

those decisions (Hall, 2010). Accordingly, scholars have

spent decades trying to understand the nature of public at-

titudes towards the Court. A substantial body of research has

shown that the public expresses institutional loyalty to the

Court even when it makes unpopular decisions. Institutional

loyalty (or “diffuse support”) for the Court is associated with

allegiance to democratic principles and procedural fairness

(Caldeira & Gibson, 1992;Tyler, 2006). Recently, research

has shown that diffuse support for the Court is strongly

predicted by “specif‌ic support”(i.e., approval or satisfaction

with the Court’s outputs) (Bartels & Johnston, 2020).

Surprisingly, there is little research on the role of gender in

structuring diffuse support. This is signif‌icant, as in other

contexts gender is critical to understanding political behavior

and attitudes (Box-Steffensmeier et al., 2004) and we think

that gender may be equally important in this context. Our

primary purpose in this article is to test whether there exists a

gender gap in perceptions of Supreme Court legitimacy (i.e.,

diffuse support) in recent years and over a substantial period

of time (2012–2017). Our secondary purpose is to explore

reasons for this gap based on an additional survey we ad-

ministered in 2021.

This article relies primarily on two datasets. First, we

explore trends in diffuse support from 2012 to 2017 using The

American Panel Survey (TAPS). This long-running panel will

allow us to consider the gender gap in diffuse support over a

lengthy period of time spanning multiple presidencies and to

persuasively compare differences across time. We provide

context to the gender gap by considering it alongside racial

and partisan gaps. Second, we f‌ielded a module in the 2021

Cooperative Election Study (CES) survey. In this survey, we

included additional questions to explore potential reasons for

the gender gap.

We f‌ind that women almost always extend less legitimacy

to the Supreme Court than do men. This is true within both

Republican and Democratic identif‌iers, and regression

analysis shows the gender gap holds when controlling for

partisanship, ideology, race, age, education, and income. The

gender gap appears to be unique to the Court (the same gaps

do not persist if we look at support for Congress and the

presidency). The gender gap is consistent and nearly as large

as the well-known racial gap in diffuse support (Gibson &

Caldeira, 1992); it is more consistent and generally larger

1

Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA

2

Department of Politics and Policy, Claremont Graduate University,

Claremont, CA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Christopher Krewson, Brigham Young University, 745 Kimball Tower,

Provo, UT 84602-0002, USA.

Email: chris_krewson@byu.edu