Policy, Politics, and Public Attitudes Toward the Supreme Court

• Author: Ariel White,Stephen D. Ansolabehere
• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X18765189
• Published date: 01 May 2020
• Date: 01 May 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X18765189

American Politics Research

2020, Vol. 48(3) 365 –376

© The Author(s) 2018

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X18765189

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Article

The Supreme Court of the United States stands apart from

the other pillars of the American government—Congress and

the President. The Court is not popularly elected. It cannot

initiate legislation or execute laws; it can only overturn the

decisions of the Congress and President or add its own inter-

pretation to the law where legislation is ambiguous. Despite

these institutional differences, does public approval of the

Court seem to work in the same ways as approval of the other

branches?

A variety of theories have been forwarded to explain the

basis for public attitudes toward the Court. One line of think-

ing is doctrinal: The public wants the Court to interpret the

Constitution a certain way, such as following strictly original

meanings, regardless of the actual policy produced (Greene,

Ansolabehere, & Persily, 2011). A second line of thinking is

functional and behavioral: People want judges to assume a

certain role or function in society, and so long as they main-

tain that function or role, people will approve of the Court. A

special case of this is the notion that the Supreme Court

maintains the Separation of Powers, and other important fea-

tures of judicial behavior include judges’ independence, hon-

esty, values, and adherence to ideas of procedural justice

(Baird, 2001; Gibson, Caldeira, Spence, 2003). A third

important line of thinking, sometimes termed attitudinal or

policy models, holds that agreement with decisions of the

court drive approval. People want government to produce a

certain policy result and the extent to which they agree with

the Court’s decisions drives support for the institution.

Agreement may be based on a number of factors, such as

party or ideology or self-interest, but, whatever the basis, so

long as the judiciary makes decisions in line with their own

policy preferences, people will approve of the Court and its

decisions (Bartels & Johnston, 2013; Friedman, 2009;

McGuire & Stimson, 2004; Mondak & Smithey, 1997).

Policy agreement models are of particular significance in

contemporary scholarship concerning judicial politics, espe-

cially the politics of the Supreme Court. The present study

focuses particularly on the third sort of model and assesses

the extent to which the public takes into account specific

Court decisions in assessing the Court’s performance and the

institution as a whole.

The idea that people’s agreement with court decisions could

shape their opinions of the court mirrors findings on

Congressional and Presidential approval. When people disagree

with the policy decisions made by Congress or the President,

they express lower levels of support for those institutions over-

all (Jones & McDermott, 2009) and even vote against represen-

tatives with whom they are in disagreement (Ansolabehere &

Jones, 2010). We explore whether attitudes toward the Supreme

Court reflect the same political considerations, even though it is

not an elected body. Following the literature on Congress and

the Presidency, we focus on the short-term measurement of

approval of the Supreme Court, not global measures such as

legitimacy. Legitimacy and approval are measured differently in

the literature. We are focused on immediate approval of the

Court and, thus, examine the most commonly used measure of

approval.1

765189APRXXX10.1177/1532673X18765189American Politics ResearchAnsolabehere et al.

research-article2018

1Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

2Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Ariel White, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Building E53-461, Cambridge, MA

02139-4307, USA.

Email: arwhi@mit.edu

Policy, Politics, and Public Attitudes

Toward the Supreme Court

Stephen D. Ansolabehere1, and Ariel White2

Abstract

We assess the importance of the public’s policy agreement with the Supreme Court on public approval of the court. Using

survey data on a range of recent court cases, we measure respondents’ perceived ideological closeness to the court. Then,

we test various theories of court approval (doctrinal, functional, attitudinal). People who believe the court has decided

recent cases as they themselves would have done, or that judges share their partisanship, report higher court approval than

those who perceive the court as ideologically distant from them. We compare these findings with similar effects of policy

agreement on Congressional and Presidential approval.

Keywords

Supreme Court, public opinion, partisanship, issue agreement