Public Mood, Previous Electoral Experience, and Responsiveness Among Federal Circuit Court Judges

Owens, Ryan J.; Wohlfarth, Patrick C.

doi:10.1177/1532673x17692325

Cited by 7 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“… Casillas et al (2011) suggest that public opinion exerts an important influence on Supreme Court decisions. Owens and Wohlfarth (2017) find similar results for federal circuit courts, despite both levels of Courts granting lifetime tenure. Indeed, legal scholars recognize the need for sentences to be neither too harsh nor too lenient because public trust in legal institutions is central to the legitimacy of the law ( Robinson 2013 ).…”

Section: Legitimacy Public Policy and Public Opinionsupporting

confidence: 53%

Jobs and Punishment: Public Opinion on Leniency for White-Collar Crime

St-Georges

Arel‐Bundock

Blais

et al. 2023

Political Research Quarterly

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Governments routinely offer deals to companies accused of white-collar crimes, allowing them to escape criminal charges in exchange for fines or penalties. This lets prosecutors avoid costly litigation and protects companies’ right to bid on lucrative public contracts, which can reduce the likelihood of bankruptcies or layoffs. Striking deals with white-collar criminals can be risky for governments because it could affect the perceived legitimacy of the legal system. This article explores the conditions under which the general public supports leniency agreements. Building on theoretical intuitions from the literature, we identify three characteristics that could affect mass attitudes: home bias, economic incentives, and retribution. We conduct a survey experiment in the United States and find moderate support for leniency agreements. Whether the crime occurs on US soil or abroad does not affect public opinion, and the number of jobs that would be jeopardized by criminal prosecution only has a small effect. Instead, survey respondents become much more supportive of a deal when it includes criminal charges for the corporate managers who were personally involved in the alleged wrongdoing. In the court of public opinion, punishing a handful of individuals appears to matter more than saving thousands of jobs.

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Section: Legitimacy Public Policy and Public Opinionsupporting

confidence: 53%

Jobs and Punishment: Public Opinion on Leniency for White-Collar Crime

St-Georges

Arel‐Bundock

Blais

et al. 2023

Political Research Quarterly

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Studies analyzing the US Supreme Court-where the justices have lifetime tenure-have shown that decisions in both criminal procedure and other types of cases are responsive to the first dimension of public policy mood (liberalism) (Casillas et al 2011, Erikson et al 2002a, McGuire & Stimson 2004). Owens & Wohlfarth (2017) have likewise found that federal circuit court judges follow circuit-level policy mood (liberalism) despite having lifetime tenure. Additionally, by influencing expected trial outcomes, public opinion may affect how prosecutors and defense attorneys present their cases to juries, which information cues they use, and whether prosecutors choose to pursue the death penalty (Baumgartner et al 2008).…”

Section: Mechanisms For Criminal Justice Representationmentioning

confidence: 92%

Public Opinion and Criminal Justice Policy: Theory and Research

Pickett

2019

Annu. Rev. Criminol.

154

120

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This article reviews evidence for the effects of public opinion on court decision-making, capital punishment policy and use, correctional expenditures, and incarceration rates. It also assesses evidence about the factors explaining changes over time in public support for punitive crime policies. Most of this evidence originates from outside of our discipline. I identify two reasons that criminologists have not made more progress toward understanding the opinion-policy relationship. One is an unfamiliarity with important theoretical and empirical developments in political science pertaining to public policy mood, parallel opinion change, majoritarian congruence, and dynamic representation. Another is our overreliance on cross-sectional studies and preoccupation with comparing support levels elicited with different questions (global versus specific) and under different conditions (uninformed versus informed). I show how the resultant findings have contributed to misunderstandings about the nature of public opinion and created a false summit in our analysis of the opinion-policy relationship.

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A Validation and Extension of State-Level Public Policy Mood: 1956–2020

Lagodny

Jones²,

Koch³

et al. 2022

State Politics Policy Q.

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To fully understand state policy outcomes or elections in the US, we need valid over-time measures of state-level public opinion. We contribute to the research on measuring state public opinion in two ways. First, we respond to Berry, Fording, Hanson, and Crofoot’s (BFHC) critique of Enns and Koch’s measure of state policy mood. We show that when BFHC’s analysis is performed using the same states and examining annual change, it validates the Enns and Koch measure and raises questions about the Berry, Ringquist, Fording, and Hanson measure. Second, we generate a new measure of state policy mood building on Enns and Koch’s approach. The new measure has even better properties than the previous measure and relates to state presidential vote and state policy liberalism in similar ways to Caughey and Warshaw’s measure of state economic liberalism. We conclude with recommendations for using the various direct measures of state public opinion.

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Public Mood, Previous Electoral Experience, and Responsiveness Among Federal Circuit Court Judges

Cited by 7 publications

References 56 publications

Jobs and Punishment: Public Opinion on Leniency for White-Collar Crime

Jobs and Punishment: Public Opinion on Leniency for White-Collar Crime

Public Opinion and Criminal Justice Policy: Theory and Research

A Validation and Extension of State-Level Public Policy Mood: 1956–2020

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