RAPID: Supreme Court Support and Democratic Values

Colorado State University, Fort Collins CO

Investigators

Abstract

The Supreme Court of the United States is one of the most powerful institutions within the American political system – exercising authority over life, liberty, and property. While granted these powers by law and political tradition, the Court’s legitimacy in making these weighty decisions rests, in no small part, on the public accepting that the Court is “above” politics. In other words, despite creating “winners” and “losers” when issuing decisions, ordinary people seem to believe two things: (1) the Court’s members were chosen via fair, democratic processes, and (2) differences in opinion are due to conflicting Constitutional interpretations rather than the naked partisan preferences of Justices. These assumptions, however, have been sorely tested in recent years. From brutal, polarized confirmation hearings to questions about candidates’ fitness to serve, and controversial, highly visible decisions, some citizens may not see the Court as the same backstop for democratic values that it was in the mid-20th Century. These developments raise thorny questions about the sources of public support for the Supreme Court more generally. We investigate whether citizens’ democratic beliefs are connected to their views about the Court’s legitimacy, and, in turn, whether those attitudes are affected by the Court’s decisions. To explore the relationship between public views about democracy and their support for the Court, this research will deploy a four-wave panel survey that will allow researchers to (1) test whether democratic values correspond to diffuse support via a rigorous panel design and, (2) analyze whether highly salient decisions affect the Court’s legitimacy, generally, and whether such decisions affect the relationship between democratic values and Court support, specifically. By collecting a combination of original survey, panel, and experimental data, this research supplies a rare opportunity to obtain contemporaneous public reactions to a series of high-profile decisions that the Court will most likely issue during the summer of 2022, which bookends a period of sincere political and democratic upheaval. Despite political scientists’ concern about democratic backsliding, insufficient attention has been paid to the role of the judiciary in deepening public cynicism about democracy. This research not only represents a significant step forward in understanding basic theories of why citizens respect the Supreme Court’s legitimacy, but it offers a chance to analyze how a potentially counter-majoritarian political institution may be contributing to this country’s ongoing crisis of democracy. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.