The Supreme Court and the US Presidential Election of 2000: Wounds, Self-Inflicted or Otherwise?

Abstract

The conventional wisdom about the US Supreme Court and the 2000 presidential election is that the Court wounded itself by participating in such a partisan dispute. By ‘wounded’ people mean that the institution lost some of its legitimacy. Evidence from our survey, conducted in early 2001, suggests little if any diminution of the Court’s legitimacy in the aftermath of Bush v. Gore, even among African Americans. We observe a relationship between evaluations of the opinion and institutional legitimacy, but the bulk of the causality seems to flow from loyalty to evaluations of the case, not vice versa. We argue that legitimacy frames perceptions of the Court opinion. Furthermore, increased awareness of the activities of the Court tends to reinforce legitimacy by exposing people to the powerful symbols of law. In 2000, legitimacy did indeed seem to provide a reservoir of good will that allowed the Court to weather the storm created by its involvement in Florida’s presidential election.

Explaining Processes of Institutional Opinion Leadership

“…On the other hand, experimental and quasi-experimental work on the Supreme Court's ability to move opinion has produced generally positive, if inconsistent, results. Conflicting findings have come from laboratory studies involving student samples (Baas and Thomas 1984;Hoekstra 1995;Mondak 1990Mondak , 1994, observational studies in naturally occurring contexts (Adamany 1973;Gibson, Caldeira, and Spence 2003;Marshall 1989), and quasi-experimental studies (Franklin and Kosaki 1989;Hoekstra and Segal 1996). Experimental studies suggest that under certain conditions, the Court is capable of moving opinion in the direction of its decisions (Clawson, Kegler, and Waltenburg 2001;Hoekstra 1995;Mondak 1990Mondak , 1992Mondak , 1994.…”

“…In addition, the results from quasi-experimental studies typically have been confined to more limited circumstances such as local public opinion (Hoekstra and Segal 1996) and the abortion issue (Franklin and Kosaki 1989). More recent studies have been more promising with respect to this hypothesis, with evidence in support of institutional opinion leadership in the context of the Court's Bush v. Gore decision (Gibson, Caldeira, and Spence 2003), black citizens' opinions on affirmative action and capital punishment (Clawson, Kegler, and Waltenburg 2003), and black citizens' opinions on the Court's rulings on the University of Michigan affirmative action cases (Clawson and Waltenburg 2004). In all three cases, the Supreme Court's power of influence has been attributed to high levels of diffuse support (see Easton 1965), or institutional loyalty (Gibson 1989;Caldeira and Gibson 1992).…”

The Israeli Supreme Court's Mythical Image A Death of a Thousand Sound Bites

“…188 It is not surprising then that James Gibson and Gregory Caldeira conclude, based on their extensive empirical research examining the American public's support for the Supreme Court, that "[t]o know courts is indeed to love them, in the sense that to know about courts is to be exposed to these legitimizing symbols." 189 They assert that "exposure to the legitimizing symbols of law and courts is perhaps the dominant process at play." 190 In this spirit the committee that made the decision regarding the architectural model for the Israeli Supreme Court's new building noted that their criterion for selection was achieving equilibrium between "awe-inspiring" and "practical considerations."…”

Campaign Support, Conflicts of Interest, and Judicial Impartiality: Can the Legitimacy of Courts Be Rescued by Recusals?

“…For example, scholars have analyzed aggregate time series (e.g. , Caldeira 1986;Marshall 1989, Mondak andSmithey 1997), generational or cohort change (e.g., Gibson and Caldeira 1992), change in response to major court decisions (Gibson, Caldeira, and Spence 2003a;Franklin and Kosaki 1989;Kritzer 2001), a few true panel studies have been conducted (e.g., Murphy and Tanenhaus 1990;Hoekstra 2000Hoekstra , 2003, some recent work has tried to develop a formal model of opinion change (e.g., Mondak and Smithey 1997), and of course several scholars have attempted to induce change in the experimental laboratory (most notably, Mondak -e.g., 1993, andHoekstra 1995). Unfortunately, many of these efforts are seriously hampered by the lack of valid measures of court legitimacy extending 4 For instance, Iyengar (2002, 697) opines that: "The spread of negative campaigning in judicial races is likely to have adverse consequences for the court system.…”

“…The context for the analysis is an experiment embedded within a 2 An exception to this assertion concerns the literature on public reactions to Bush v. Gore. In a comparison of data from a survey conducted at the height of the controversy with survey data from 1995and 1987, Gibson, Caldeira, and Spence (2003a found no evidence whatsoever that the court's legitimacy took a dip owing to its decision. Other scholars report similar findings; for instance, Price and Romantan (2004, 953) draw the following conclusion from their research: "On the whole our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the election -even with the vituperative disputes in its wakeserved to boost public attachment to American political institutions."…”