Super-legislature vs. Congressional Rubber Stamp:
How Policy Orientations Shape Public Evaluations of the Supreme Court
Abstract:
Building upon previous scholarship analyzing the relationship between public opinion and Supreme Court legitimacy, this project investigates under what conditions policy impacts diffuse support of the Court. I compare reactions to the Court under two conditions: judicial activism and judicial restraint. Previous research suggests that policy impacts specific support of the Court, but it is unclear whether it impacts diffuse support. This project argues that policy does impact diffuse support, but only when the Court is judicially activist, as policy motivations of justices are more visible to the public. For my activist case study, I analyzed the Hughes Court (1930-1941). For my restrained case study, I researched the Vinson Court (1946-1953). I used a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to examine this relationship. For my qualitative methods, I analyzed work by contemporary scholars of the Court for each time period, looking to see if they took policy into consideration when evaluating the Supreme Court. For my quantitative work, I analyzed public opinion data sets from 1939 and 1954, running a series of linear regressions to determine if the relationship between policy and diffuse support is statistically significant under both conditions. Qualitative analysis revealed that individuals under both conditions used policy as a lens to understand the Court through, but while it was the main lens during the activist Hughes Court, it was one of many lenses used to understand the Vinson Court. Quantitative analysis revealed that policy had an important impact on diffuse support under both conditions, but the relationship was only statistically significant under the activist model, suggesting that policy impacts diffuse support of the Supreme Court more when the Court is activist compared to when it is restrained.