Legitimacy and the Mass Public-PSCI 3271

What are the two types of public support for the Supreme Court, and how do they differ?

1)Specific Support

2)Diffuse Suppor

Specific Support

Satisfaction with the Court's decisions or general job approval.

Diffuse Support

Support for the Court's powers and continued existence, even in spite of disagreement with its decisions. This is considered the major backstop of the Court's power.

What was the broad scholarly consensus (until roughly five years ago) regarding the stability of diffuse support?

What are the three classic sources from which diffuse support for the Court has generally been thought to flow?

1) Democratic Values

2)Positivity Theory

3)Procedural Fairness

What is Positivity Theory and what are the legitimizing symbols it references?

Positivity theory states that political conflicts involving the Court are intrinsically presented to the public alongside legitimizing symbols, which bias the public toward a positive view of the Court. Legitimizing symbols include things like robes, the marble courthouse, law, precedent, and legal reasoning.

What is the core idea of the "Positivity Theory" phrase, "To know the Court is to love the Court"?

People who have more knowledge of the Court or are more aware of its decisions consistently have higher diffuse support because they are constantly exposed to legitimizing symbols.

What is the concept of Procedural Fairness in the context of judicial legitimacy?

The idea that people afford legitimacy to courts because they view their processes as relatively neutral and fair and engaged in law, not politics. This would mean the Court's legitimacy rests more on the process it follows than the actual decisions it produces.

How did Christenson & Glick (2019) challenge the stability consensus using the Shelby County (VRA) and Windsor (DOMA) decisions?

They found that the impact of losing was bigger than the impact of winning. The net effect of seeing both a conservative case (VRA) and a liberal case (DOMA) resulted in a net negative effect on legitimacy for respondents, suggesting the "running tally" might be shifting.

How did Christenson & Glick (2019) challenge the stability consensus using the Shelby County (VRA) and Windsor (DOMA) decisions?

They found that the impact of losing was bigger than the impact of winning. The net effect of seeing both a conservative case (VRA) and a liberal case (DOMA) resulted in a net negative effect on legitimacy for respondents, suggesting the "running tally" might be shifting.

Bartels & Johnston (2020) argue that decisional disagreement affects diffuse support, particularly by making people more willing to support narrow court-curbing measures. What is an example of a narrow attack question they used?

"The Supreme Court's ruling should not be the final word on the matter and there ought to be an effort to overturn the ruling". They found there is much more support for narrow attacks than the broad, "do away with the Supreme Court" questions.

Bartels & Johnston (2020) found that declines in legitimacy are intensified by what kind of polarization?

Affective polarization, which measures how much partisanship is based on in-group/out-group dynamics (liking your party strongly and disliking the other strongly) rather than policy positions.

What major recent event has led to a significant challenge and decline in the Supreme Court's job approval and specific support, particularly among Democrats?

The Dobbs v. Jackson (2022) decision. This decision struck down a well-known precedent (Roe v. Wade) and was accompanied by the unprecedented leak of the draft majority opinion, both of which could damage process perceptions.

What is the current change observed regarding the link between knowledge of the Court and diffuse support?

The recent era has eliminated the advantage the Court has among more knowledgeable respondents. For Democrats, those who know more about the Court are now no more supportive than others, contradicting the long-held "to know the Court is to love the Court" principle.

What is "values-based regeneration" (Mondak and Smithey 1997)?

The idea that because diffuse support flows from democratic values, over time people with high democratic values will forget about individual events (like an unpopular decision) and revert back to high support for the Court.