Interracial Differences in the Legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James L. Gibson ◽  
Michael J. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Institutional Support ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Systematic Variation ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The U.S

Despite a series of high-profile confrontations between blacks and the U.S. legal system, ranging from protests in Ferguson, Missouri to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to gut the Voting Rights Act, we know surprisingly little about interracial variation in support for the legal system. This chapter uses data from the Freedom and Tolerance Surveys (FATS) to describe how support for the U.S. Supreme Court differs by race and ethnicity. We provide evidence that whites, blacks, and Hispanics exhibit striking and systematic variation in their support for the U.S. Supreme Court and that these differences persist even after accounting for the most plausible alternative explanations for institutional support. We discuss how racialized institutional support for the U.S. Supreme Court may hinder its institutional efficacy.

Have Ferguson and Its Companions Contaminated Black Support for Legal Institutions?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James L. Gibson ◽  
Michael J. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Representative Sample ◽  
Institutional Support ◽  
Legal Institutions ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
High Bench ◽  
The U.S

Given that African Americans have been victimized by the abuses of individual police officers as well as by discriminatory public policies such as “stop-and-frisk,” it is no surprise that considerable alienation seems to characterize the contemporary relationship between African Americans and the legal institutions that govern them. But have those attitudes poisoned more general views of legal institutions such as the U.S. Supreme Court? Using a nationally-representative sample of African Americans, we assess whether blacks generalize from their experiences with local authorities to perceptions of legal system fairness, and further to institutional support for the high bench. While we find that perceptions of legal system fairness have not undermined Supreme Court legitimacy, all of the relationships we consider are found to be conditional upon the nature of group attachments.

Voter Purges After Shelby

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (6) ◽  
pp. 687-692
Author(s):  
Catalina Feder ◽  
Michael G. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Full Control ◽  
Shelby County ◽  
First Time ◽  
Election Laws ◽  
The U.S

In Shelby County v. Holder (570 U.S. 529 (2013)), the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the “coverage formula” in Section 4b of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) that determined which jurisdictions had to presubmit changes in their election policies for federal approval. This ruling allowed covered counties full control over their election laws for the first time in 40 years. We engage the question of whether counties that had previously been “covered” purged voters at a higher rate than noncovered counties after the coverage formula was struck down. We find increases in purge rate of between 1.5 and 4.5 points in formerly covered jurisdictions post- Shelby, compared with counties that had not been subject to preclearance. Most of the increase came immediately, as the effect in 2014 is substantively and significantly higher than that in 2016. These findings suggest that while counties may have aggressively purged voters in 2014—the first election after the coverage formula’s demise—they may have tempered this behavior thereafter.

Questions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James L. Gibson ◽  
Michael J. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
Future Research ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
The U.S

We have investigated the differences in support for the U.S. Supreme Court among black, Hispanic, and white Americans, catalogued the variation in African Americans’ group attachments and experiences with legal authorities, and examined how those latter two factors shape individuals’ support for the U.S. Supreme Court, that Court’s decisions, and for their local legal system. We take this opportunity to weave our findings together, taking stock of what we have learned from our analyses and what seem like fruitful paths for future research. In the process, we revisit Positivity Theory. We present a modified version of the theory that we hope will guide future inquiry on public support for courts, both in the United States and abroad.

scholarly journals Immunizing the Flock: How the Pandemic Court Rewrote Religious Freedom

Laws ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Paul Baumgardner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
The Past ◽  
The U.S

When coronavirus began to descend upon the United States, religious freedom advocates across the country sounded the alarm that citizens’ religious practices and institutions were under threat. Although some of the most extreme arguments championed by these advocates were not validated by our legal system, many were. This article explores the underappreciated gains made by religious freedom advocates before the U.S. Supreme Court over the past year. As a result of the “Pandemic Court”, religious freedom in the United States has been rewritten. This promises to radically change the educational, employment, and health prospects of millions of Americans for the rest of the pandemic and long afterwards.

scholarly journals The Impact of the Voting Rights Act on American Political Parties

1994 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 565-575
Author(s):  
Howard A. Scarrow
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Legal Standards ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Impact

The weakening of American political parties has been a theme featured in the writings of political scientists for the past several decades. This essay is addressed to developments which may further that decline-developments which have undermined the very purpose which American political parties are said to serve. I refer to legal standards which were established by the Supreme Court in 1964, and which have since been expanded by the Court and then incorporated into the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its amendment in 1982.

Response to Commentaries

2000 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 443-450
Author(s):  
J. Morgan Kousser
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
The Body ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Chronological Order ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Long Time

The often kind and always interesting comments of Larry Griffin, David James, and Bradley Palmquist touch different aspects of Colorblind Injustice. Let me respond to them, in effect, in chronological order, according to which periods of history illuminate the comments the most. Palmquist points out that institutions like the Supreme Court may suddenly reverse their decisions, as the Court did in the !“switch in time that saved nine” after FDR had proposed to pack the body in 1937, or as it over-turned Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). But as the Brown example suggests, it often takes a long time to overturn precedents, and that is the case with minority voting rights, as well. It was 25 years after Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy,” 24 years after Earl Warren ceased to be Chief Justice, and 23 years after Nixon proposed to water down the Voting Rights Act before the overwhelmingly Republican Supreme Court dared to seriously undermine African American and Latino political rights. Even then, they hesitated to attack the Voting Rights Act itself directly. Major institutions are tough in two senses: their policies often have large impacts, and the institutions, including those as tiny as the nine-member Supreme Court, are difficult to change.

Voting Rights

2020 ◽  
pp. 194-218
Author(s):  
J. Morgan Kousser
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
White Male ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Early National Period ◽  
White Males ◽  
Early National ◽  
Voter Suppression

The development of the voting rights of three American groups—white males, women, and African Americans—is described in this essay in order to account for differences in the patterns of enfranchisement, disfranchisement, and, in the case of African Americans, reenfranchisement. Despite property qualifications, white male suffrage was much broader during the colonial and early national period than is often realized. Black suffrage has always been inextricably intertwined with partisan advantage. Women’s suffrage took so long to attain and the movement had to narrow its goals so much to win that female votes made little impact on politics until many years after 1920. The Voting Rights Act, which reenfranchised many African Americans after 1965, has always depended for its impact on Supreme Court decisions, which have passed through repeated cycles of support and restriction and have recently severely undermined protections, leaving minority voting rights at the mercy of “voter suppression” laws passed by their partisan enemies.

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