Scholars believe that justices on the U.S. Supreme Court strategically respond to—but rarely shape—public opinion. This article provides a new perspective on judicial behavior. Looking “off the bench,” I find evidence that justices actively shape perceptions of the Court through their public speeches. In particular, I employed a randomized field experiment and a randomized survey experiment to analyze the causal effects of attending a speech and reading about it in the news. For the field experiment, I assigned law students with reservations to a public speech by Justice Sotomayor to take a survey just before or just after the event. For the separate survey experiment, I assigned individuals in a treatment group to read news coverage of the speech before responding to survey questions. I find that, among attendees, justices improve their own favorability and change beliefs about the importance of law in judicial decision making. Among those who read of the speech, justices also change perceptions of the politicization of the Court and strengthen institutional loyalty. These findings have important implications for our understanding of judicial behavior and public perceptions of the Court.
BairdVanessa A.GanglAmy. 2006. “Shattering the Myth of Legality: The Impact of the Media’s Framing of Supreme Court Procedures on Perceptions of Fairness.” Political Psychology27 (4): 597–614.
2.
BaumLawrence. 2009. Judges and Their Audiences: A Perspective on Judicial Behavior. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
3.
BerinskyAdam J.HuberGregory A.LenzGabriel S.2012. “Evaluating Online Labor Markets for Experimental Research: Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk.” Political Analysis20 (3): 351–68.
4.
BickelAlexander M.1986. The Least Dangerous Branch: The Supreme Court at the Bar of Politics. New Haven: Yale University Press.
5.
BlackRyan C.OwensRyan J.2009. “Agenda Setting in the Supreme Court: The Collision of Policy and Jurisprudence.” The Journal of Politics71 (3): 1062–75.
6.
BlackRyan C.OwensRyan J.ArmalyMiles T.2016. “A Well-Traveled Lot: A Research Note on Judicial Travel by U.S. Supreme Court Justices.” Justice System Journal37 (4): 367–84.
7.
BlackRyanRyanC.OwensJ.WedekingJustinWohlfarthPatrick C.2016a. “The Influence of Public Sentiment on Supreme Court Opinion Clarity.” Law & Society Review50 (3): 703–32.
8.
BlackRyan C.OwensRyan J.WedekingJustinWohlfarthPatrick C.2016b. U.S. Supreme Court Opinions and Their Audiences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
9.
BramanEileenNelsonThomas E.2007. “Mechanism of Motivated Reasoning? Analogical Perception in Discrimination Disputes.” American Journal of Political Science51 (4): 940–56.
10.
BrockTimothy C.1968. “Implications of Commodity Theory for Value Change.” In Psychological Foundations of Attitudes, edited by GreenwaldAnthony G.BrockTimothy C.OstromThomas M. 243–75. New York, NY: Academic Press.
11.
CasillasChristopher J.EnnsPeter K.WohlfarthPatrick C.2011. “How Public Opinion Constrains the U.S. Supreme Court.” American Journal of Political Science55 (1): 74–88.
12.
ChristensonDino P.GlickDavid M.2015. “Chief Justice Roberts’s Health Care Decision Disrobed: The Microfoundations of the Supreme Court’s Legitimacy.” American Journal of Political Science59 (2): 403–18.
13.
CialdiniRobert B.2009. Influence: Science and Practice. Vol. 4. Needham Heights, MA: Pearson.
14.
ClarkTom S.2009. “The Separation of Powers, Court Curbing, and Judicial Legitimacy.” American Journal of Political Science53 (4): 971–89.
15.
CliffordScottJewellRyan M.Waggoner.Philip D.2015. “Are Samples Drawn from Mechanical Turk Valid for Research on Political Ideology?” Research & Politics2 (4): 1-9.
16.
DavisRichard. 2011. Justices and Journalists: The U.S. Supreme Court and the Media. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
17.
DruckmanJames N.GreenDonald P.KuklinskiJames H.LupiaArthur. 2011. Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Political Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
18.
EpsteinLeeKnightJack. 1997. The Choices Justices Make. Washington, DC: CQ Press.
19.
FennoRichard. 1978. Home Style: House Members in Their Districts. Boston: Little, Brown.
20.
ForgasJoseph P.FiedlerKlausCranoWilliam D.2015. “Sydney Symposium of Social Psychology: Social Psychology and Politics.” Vol. 17. New York, NY: Tayler & Francis.
21.
GibsonJames L.CaldeiraGregory A.2009. Citizens, Courts, and Confirmations: Positivity Theory and the Judgments of the American People. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
22.
GibsonJames L.CaldeiraGregory A.2011. “Has Legal Realism Damaged the Legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court?” Law & Society Review45 (1): 195–219.
23.
GibsonJames L.LodgeMiltonWoodsonBenjamin. 2014. “Losing, but Accepting: Legitimacy, Positivity Theory, and the Symbols of Judicial Authority.” Law & Society Review48 (4): 837–66.
24.
GibsonJames L.NelsonMichael J.2014. “The Legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court: Conventional Wisdoms, and Recent Challenges Thereto.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science10:201–19.
25.
GillJeff. 2018. “Comments from the New Editor.” Political Analysis26 (1): 1–2.
26.
HansfordThomas G.SpriggsJames F.2006. The Politics of Precedent on the U.S. Supreme Court. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
27.
HibbingJohn R.Theiss-MorseElizabeth. 2002. Stealth Democracy: Americans’ Beliefs about How Government Should Work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
28.
HortonJohn J.RandDavid G.ZeckhauserRichard J.2011. “The Online Laboratory: Conducting Experiments in a Real Labor Market.” Experimental Economics14 (3): 399–425.
29.
JohnsonTimothy R.RobertsJason M.2004. “Presidential Capital and The Supreme Court Confirmation Process.” The Journal of Politics66 (3): 663–83.
30.
KernellSamuel. 2006. Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership. Washington, DC: CQ Press.
31.
KrewsonChristopherOwensRyan. 2017. “History of Supreme Court Research.” In Handbook of Judicial Behavior, edited by HowardRobertRandazzoKirk. 97-113. New York, NY: Routledge.
32.
LynnMichael. 1991. “Scarcity Effects on Value: A Quantitative Review of the Commodity Theory Literature.” Psychology & Marketing8 (1): 43–57.
33.
LynnMichael. 1992. “The Psychology of Unavailability: Explaining Scarcity and Cost Effects on Value.” Basic and Applied Social Psychology13 (1): 3–7.
34.
MorelandRichard L.ZajoncRobert B.1982. “Exposure Effects in Person Perception: Familiarity, Similarity, and Attraction.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology18 (5): 395–415.
35.
MullinixKevin J.LeeperThomas J.DruckmanJames N.FreeseJeremy. 2015. “The Generalizability of Survey Experiments.” Journal of Experimental Political Science2 (2): 109–38.
36.
MurphyWalter F.1964. Elements of Judicial Strategy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
37.
MutzDiana C.ReevesByron. 2005. “The New Videomalaise: The Effects of Televised Incivility on Political Trust.” American Political Science Review99 (1): 1–15.
38.
NelsonMichael J.GibsonJames L.2017. “U.S. Supreme Court Legitimacy: Unanswered Questions and an Agenda for Future Research.” In Handbook of Judicial Behavior, edited by HowardRobertRandazzoKirk.132–150. New York, NY: Routledge.
RosenbergGerald N.2008. The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring about Social Change?Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
44.
SchmidtChristopher W.2013. “Beyond the Opinion: Supreme Court Justices and Extra Judicial Speech.” Chicago-Kent Law Review88 (2): 487-526.
45.
StatonJeffrey K.2010. Judicial Power and Strategic Communication in Mexico. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
46.
SudmanSeymourBradburnNorman M.SchwarzNorbert. 1996. Thinking about Answers: The Application of Cognitive Processes to Survey Methodology. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
47.
TylerTom R.2006. “Psychological Perspectives on Legitimacy and Legitimation.” Annual Review of Psychology57:375–400.
48.
UraJoseph DanielWohlfarthPatrick C.2010. “‘An Appeal to the People’: Public Opinion and Congressional Support for the Supreme Court.” The Journal of Politics72 (4): 939–56.
49.
WassersteinRonald L.LazarNicole A.2016. “The ASA’s Statement on P-Values: Context, Process, and Purpose.” The American Statistician70 (2): 129–33.
50.
ZallerJohn. 1992. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
51.
ZinkJames R.SpriggsJames F.ScottJohn T.2009. “Courting the Public: The Influence of Decision Attributes on Individuals’ Views of Court Opinions.” The Journal of Politics71 (3): 909–25.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
