How Political Signals Affect Public Support for Judicial Nominations

Date01 June 2017
Published date01 June 2017
DOI10.1177/1065912917695229
Subject MatterArticles
https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912917695229
Political Research Quarterly
2017, Vol. 70(2) 374 –393
© 2017 University of Utah
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DOI: 10.1177/1065912917695229
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Article
Introduction
How do members of the public form opinions on candi-
dates to the US Supreme Court? The 2016 case of Merrick
Garland is illustrative. Garland was, by all accounts,
among the most qualified candidates ever named—a dis-
tinguished Harvard Law graduate who had spent nineteen
years on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit,
three as its chief judge. However, despite his legal cre-
dentials and judicial experience, Garland’s nomination
generated polarized responses from members of the pub-
lic. According to one poll, Republicans were more likely
than Democrats to have negative or somewhat negative
opinions of Garland’s qualifications (24% to 11%) and to
oppose Garland’s Senate confirmation (54% to 9%)
(CNN). In sum, one of the most objectively qualified
nominees generated significant partisan opposition—not
just from elites, but also from members of the public.
Surprisingly, the literature on judicial nominations
provides a limited insight into Garland’s nomination.
Much of this literature suggests that the Supreme Court
engenders strong feelings of deference and legitimacy,
and that this belief of the Court as being “beyond poli-
tics” extends an aura of deference to the nominees them-
selves. However, as Garland’s nomination illustrates,
even highly qualified candidates can generate significant
public opposition. This in turn raises important and unan-
swered questions. What characteristics drive public sup-
port for candidates to judicial positions? How do these
intersect with partisan affiliations? What explains that
even extremely qualified candidates, such as Garland,
can galvanize partisan opposition?
I address these questions via the use of a novel, two-
part survey experiment involving 1,650 US adults. The
experiment relies on a conjoint design that presents
respondents with different potential candidates, all of
whom have randomly generated characteristics. By eval-
uating which combinations lead to more support, the con-
joint design enables the isolation of those characteristics
that are more or less popular (Hainmueller, Hopkins, and
Yamamoto 2014). In addition, by presenting respondents
with a single professional and educational profile at a
time, the conjoint design also closely reflects how candi-
dates are presented to the public.
695229PRQXXX10.1177/1065912917695229Political Research QuarterlySen
research-article2017
1Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
Corresponding Author:
Maya Sen, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard
University, 79 John F. Kennedy St., Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Email: maya_sen@hks.harvard.edu
How Political Signals Affect Public
Support for Judicial Nominations:
Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment
Maya Sen1
Abstract
How do Americans evaluate potential US Supreme Court candidates? Using a novel, two-part conjoint experiment, I
show that respondents put high importance on the political leanings of potential Court candidates, a finding in contrast
with the scholarly view that the public views the Court as different from other, more political institutions. Indeed,
when respondents are given information about a nominee’s partisan leanings, they rely extensively on that information
in deciding whether to support the candidate, whether they trust the candidate, and whether they find the candidate
qualified. By contrast, when partisan information is withheld, respondents appear to use other kinds of signals, such
as race, to fill in the gaps. Those who are most knowledgeable about the Court are most influenced by these partisan
signals, providing further support for the importance of political heuristics. The results suggest that the public’s
evaluation of judicial nominees is more in line with how it evaluates other political actors. They also suggest that even
candidates with excellent qualifications need not garner bipartisan public support.
Keywords
Supreme Court, public opinion, survey experiment
Sen 375
Using this design, I find, somewhat in contrast to the
existing literature on legitimacy or judiciousness, that
political signals are the most important factor in whether
individuals support or trust potential candidates, or
whether they think they are qualified to be named to the
Court. More in line with growing literature demonstrat-
ing partisan responses to the Court and its rulings (B. L.
Bartels and Johnston 2012, 2013; Christenson and Glick
2015, 2014) and with a robust literature documenting the
importance of political affiliations in the formulation of
beliefs more broadly (e.g., L. M. Bartels 2002a; Gerber
and Huber 2009), I find that respondents are more likely
to think that co-partisan nominees are more trustworthy,
more qualified, and more likely to merit support as poten-
tial justices. Also contrary to some of the literature on
legitimacy, I find that these differences persist both when
examining reactions to the most highly qualified candi-
dates and also regardless of how strongly respondents
believe in the Court’s legitimacy. In addition, and also in
line with literature in political psychology (e.g., Zaller
1992), the more respondents know about the Court, the
more important partisan cues become. Such a pattern may
be the case precisely because those who are more knowl-
edgeable may be more exposed to news coverage of the
Court—coverage that increasingly may portray the jus-
tices as influenced by their political views (Johnston and
Bartels 2010).
However, nominees like Garland are touted for their
professional experience, but little is said about their polit-
ical or policy beliefs—a long-standing norm in Supreme
Court nominations. Thus, to assess how people formulate
opinions in a more realistic scenario in which precise
information about the partisan or ideological views of
nominees is withheld, I randomly assign some respon-
dents to a conjoint design that withholds partisan infor-
mation. Surprisingly, comparing the two respondent
subsets suggests that, in the absence of clear political
cues, respondents rely on other kinds of signals (e.g.,
race, gender) to infer candidates’ political leanings. The
use of these cues in turn varies by respondents’ own party
identification. To explain these results, I present a theory
of nominee support called political searching, which
builds off existing theories in political psychology. This
framework posits that the political leanings of a nominee
are highly salient to how Americans evaluate judicial
candidates. As such, members of the public will examine
the explicit political cues available and, in the absence of
such cues, will seek out other information to try to piece
together the candidates’ political leanings. This kind of
information gathering is even more important for those
who have extensive knowledge of the Court: these indi-
viduals are the most likely to know the Court’s political
landscape and the possibility that appointments could
affect later rulings. That is, political proximity appears to
rise in importance the higher one’s level of awareness is
about the Court.
This paper proceeds as follows. The first section dis-
cusses four theories of public attitude formation on nomi-
nees that motivate the experimental inquiry. The next
section explains the conjoint design and its advantages.
The core results demonstrating the importance of partisan
cues are presented next, with attention to how this varies
according to levels of knowledge and candidate quality
and in the absence of political cues in the two sections
that follow. The discussion section then explores how the
findings provide support for politically oriented theories
and less so for the theory of judiciousness. The final sec-
tion concludes by noting the implications of this research
for real-world nominations, specifically noting that char-
acteristics associated with judiciousness may be impor-
tant for the assessment of a candidate’s qualifications, but
such characteristics do not necessarily lend themselves to
support for or trust in the candidate.
Theories of How the Public Views
Supreme Court Nominees
Drawing from existing literature on public opinion on the
Supreme Court, I consider three theories for understand-
ing public support of Court nominees: (1) judiciousness,
(2) ideological agreement, and (3) political searching. I
also discuss a fourth theory, which is (4) reasoning based
on descriptive characteristics. These hypotheses inform
the conjoint design.
Viewing Nominees via Judiciousness (or
Legitimacy)
The dominant theory in the scholarly literature on the
Supreme Court has been that of legitimacy, which posits
that the Court enjoys greater deference than other
branches (Casey 1974; Dahl 1957). Specifically, the
Court’s intellectual atmosphere and ability to appear
above politics engenders greater public confidence and
deference. Numerous studies have shown that high levels
of legitimacy are predictive of attitudes toward the Court
as well as support for its rulings (Baird and Gangl 2006;
B. L. Bartels and Johnston 2013; Casey 1974; Gibson
2007; Gibson and Caldeira 2009b, 2009c; Gibson,
Caldeira, and Spence 2003; Scheb and Lyons 2000).
Other studies have found that legitimacy continues to be
an important frame through which Americans view the
Court, despite increasing concerns about politicized rul-
ings (e.g., Gibson and Caldeira 2011; Scheb and Lyons
2000). An extension to this framework concerns the rela-
tionship between knowledge about the Court and its legit-
imacy, with several studies finding a positive relationship
(e.g., Gibson and Caldeira 2009a; Gibson, Caldeira, and

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