In analyzing editorial reactions to church-state decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, some support is found for the hypothesis that approval of judicial decisions correlates with partisan attitudes. However, it is found that partisan cleavages on Court decisions have blurred due to habituation to precedent, compromised holdings, and judicial justification. This evidence leads the authors to conclude that attentive lay publics of the Court, such as editorialists, may be less partisan, or partisan less often, than many observers have supposed.
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