Citizens, Courts, and Confirmations

by Gibson, James L.; Caldeira, Gregory A.

• ISBN13: 9780691139883
• ISBN10: 0691139881
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-05-26
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

In recent years the American public has witnessed several hard-fought battles over nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court. In these heated confirmation fights, candidates' legal and political philosophies have been subject to intense scrutiny and debate.Citizens, Courts, and Confirmationsexamines one such fight--over the nomination of Samuel Alito--to discover how and why people formed opinions about the nominee, and to determine how the confirmation process shaped perceptions of the Supreme Court's legitimacy.Drawing on a nationally representative survey, James Gibson and Gregory Caldeira use the Alito confirmation fight as a window into public attitudes about the nation's highest court. They find that Americans know far more about the Supreme Court than many realize, that the Court enjoys a great deal of legitimacy among the American people, that attitudes toward the Court as an institution generally don't suffer from partisan or ideological polarization, and that public knowledge enhances the legitimacy accorded the Court. Yet the authors demonstrate that partisan and ideological infighting that treats the Court as just another political institution undermines the considerable public support the institution currently enjoys, and that politicized confirmation battles pose a grave threat to the basic legitimacy of the Supreme Court.

Author Biography

James L. Gibson is the Sidney W. Souers Professor of Government at Washington University in St. Louis. His books include "Overcoming Apartheid: Can Truth Reconcile a Divided Nation?" Gregory A. Caldeira holds the Ann and Darrell Dreher Chair in Political Communication and Policy Thinking at Ohio State University.

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables	p. ix
Preface	p. xi
Introduction: The Public and Supreme Court Nominations	p. 1
Changes in Attitudes toward Judicial Institutions	p. 4
The Theory of Positivity Bias	p. 7
Outlining the Chapters That Follow	p. 14
Knowing about Courts	p. 17
Assessing Public Information about Law and Courts	p. 19
Empirical Evidence of Mass Ignorance	p. 20
Discussion and Concluding Comments	p. 34
Appendix 2.A: Survey Design, The 2001 Survey	p. 35
The Popular Legitimacy of the United States Supreme Court	p. 36
Theories of Institutional Legitimacy	p. 38
Measuring Institutional Legitimacy	p. 44
Accounting for Individual-Level Variability in Institutional Loyalty	p. 49
Discussion	p. 61
Institutional Loyalty, Positivity Bias, and the Alito Nomination	p. 63
The Confirmation of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court	p. 66
The Positivity Theory Hypotheses	p. 69
Assessments of the Confirmation Process	p. 71
The Models	p. 72
Determinants of Confirmation Preferences	p. 85
Discussion and Concluding Comments	p. 93
A Dynamic Test of the Positivity Bias Hypothesis	p. 96
Applying the Theory of Positivity Bias to Confirmations	p. 97
Measuring Change in Attitudes toward the U.S. Supreme Court	p. 98
The Model of Change in Institutional Support	p. 103
Findings	p. 110
Discussion and Concluding Comments	p. 119
Concluding Thoughts, Theory, and Policy	p. 121
Caveats, Puzzles, and Questions	p. 125
Survey Design: The 2005 Survey	p. 129
The Representativeness of the Panel Sample	p. 131
The Supreme Court and the U.S. Presidential Election of 2000: Wounds, Self-Inflicted or Otherwise?	p. 133
The Theory of Institutional Legitimacy	p. 135
Institutional Loyalty in the Aftermath of the Election	p. 139
Views of the Court's Opinion in Bush v. Gore	p. 144
Discussion and Concluding Comments	p. 156
Survey Design	p. 158
Measurement	p. 159
References	p. 163
Index	p. 175
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