Updating Supreme Court Legitimacy: Testing the “Rule, Learn, Update” Model of Political Communication

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (6) ◽  
pp. 980-1002 ◽  
Author(s):  
James L. Gibson ◽  
Miguel M. Pereira ◽  
Jeffrey Ziegler
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Representative Sample ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
Empirical Tests ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
The U.S

One of the more important innovations in the study of how citizens assess the U.S. Supreme Court is the ideological updating model, which assumes that citizens grant legitimacy to the institution according to the perceived distance between themselves and the Court on a unidimensional ideological (liberal–conservative) continuum. Under this model, citizens are also said to update this calculation with every new salient Supreme Court decision. The model’s requirements, however, do not seem to square with the long-established view that Americans are largely innocent of ideology. Here, we conduct an audit of the model’s mechanisms using a series of empirical tests applied to a nationally representative sample. Our general conclusion is that the ideological updating model, especially when supplemented with the requirement that citizens must become aware of Court decisions, simply does not square with the realities of American politics. Students of Supreme Court legitimacy may therefore want to search for other theories of legitimacy updating.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Donald W. Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Federal Court ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Court Records ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
The U.S

This introduction reframes the history of the U.S. Supreme Court decision Hague v. CIO (1939) that guaranteed speech and assembly rights in public municipal forums under federal law for the first time. It lifts the story out of standard treatment as a product of police repression of labor organizers by city boss Frank Hague, exploring instead the case’s broader roots in multiple changes in city governance, policing, the labor movement, civil liberties law, and anticommunism and antifascism politics of the late New Deal era. It urges examination of all sides of the controversy, winners and losers, scrutinizing evidence beyond antiboss sources, including varied newspapers, municipal reports, trial transcripts, labor archives, and federal court records. It views the case as part of a constitutional watershed.

The Early 2000s

2021 ◽  
pp. 131-144
Author(s):  
Michael J. Rosenfeld
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Gay Rights ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Marriage Equality ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Same Sex Marriage ◽  
State Laws ◽  
State Supreme Court ◽  
The U.S

Chapter 9 tells the story of Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 Supreme Court decision that finally struck down the remaining state laws that criminalized sodomy. In 2004 Massachusetts became the first state in the U.S. to have marriage equality, following the state supreme court decision in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health. Opponents of gay rights fought furiously to overturn marriage equality in Massachusetts, but once straight people saw that marriage equality cost them nothing, the opposition faded away. Gay rights groups in Massachusetts prevailed despite having many institutional disadvantages. In California in 2008, Proposition 8 was passed by voters to reintroduce a same-sex marriage ban.

The Moral Core of U.S. Constitutional Bans on Hate Speech Codes

1998 ◽  
pp. 33-37
Author(s):  
Norman Fischer
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Speech Code ◽  
Stanford University ◽  
Speech Codes ◽  
Moral Basis ◽  
The U.S

The striking down of the Stanford University Hate Speech Code on February 27, 1995 demonstrated the strong animus in U.S. First Amendment decisions against such codes. Judge Peter Stone, applying the U.S. Supreme Court decision in R.A.V. ruled, first, that the Stanford Code was too broad, and second, that the state cannot censor content by picking out some "fighting words" to prohibit. I argue that the moral basis for banning overbroad codes combines a nonconsequential emphasis on the value of liberty with a consequentialist analysis of what happens when liberty that should be protected is entangled in codes reflecting liberty that should not be protected. In contrast, the moral basis for content neutrality does not depend on consequentialist thinking, but shows that the very search for a moral basis for banning the purest acts of hateful speech logically makes the speech protected by elevating it to a viewpoint.

Disputing the Supreme Court Decision, 1857

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
William F. Moore ◽  
Jane Ann Moore
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Abraham Lincoln ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Dred Scott ◽  
Federal Authority ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines Abraham Lincoln and Owen Lovejoy's criticism of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1857 ruling in the case of Dred Scott. The Dred Scott decision, written by Chief Justice Roger Taney, affirmed that slaves were not citizens and indeed “had no rights which a white man was bound to accept.” Lincoln and Lovejoy denounced the Supreme Court's interpretation that the Constitution provided federal authority to reduce human beings to property without rights, accusing it of political abuse of judicial power. This chapter begins with a discussion of the Illinois Supreme Court's previous rulings in connection with the slave transit law, along with Lincoln and Lovejoy's argument that humans could not legally be reduced to property under the Constitution. It then considers the two men's views on religion and politics as well as their response to the Dred Scott decision. It also looks at Lincoln and Lovejoy's preparations for the 1858 elections.

REPUBLICANS ON ABORTION RIGHTS

Think ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (39) ◽  
pp. 9-18
Author(s):  
Clement Dore
Keyword(s):  
Pregnant Women ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Right To Privacy ◽  
Constitutional Right ◽  
Roe V Wade ◽  
The U.S

The Platform of the U.S. Republican Party in 2012 contains a promise to overturn the landmark Supreme Court decision, Roe. v. Wade, that laws prohibiting abortion are incompatible with the constitutional right to privacy of pregnant women. The Republican vice presidential nominee, Congressman Paul Ryan, opposes that decision as a matter of conviction. Congressman Ryan says that human life begins at conception, though he adds that abortion should be legal if a woman's pregnancy results from rape or incest, or if the life of the mother is at stake. Despite his reputation among Republicans as an astute thinker, Congressman Ryan's reasoning about abortion is faulty.

U.S. Supreme Court Decision-Making and the Free Exercise Clause

1993 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 511-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph A. Ignagni
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Free Exercise ◽  
Free Exercise Clause ◽  
Attitudinal Model ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Free Exercise Of Religion ◽  
The U.S

The U.S. Supreme Court, at various times, has changed the constitutional tests it claimed to use in order to settle free exercise of religion disputes. These changes in official doctrine and the manner in which many cases have been decided have left the Supreme Court open to much criticism from legal scholars. This study differs substantially from previous work in this area. It uses a fact-attitudinal model to analyze the cases from the Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist Courts. Its findings indicate that these decisions are, generally, explainable and predictable.

The court as a spectrum regulator: will there be a European analogue to U.S. cases NextWave and GWI?

2003 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick S. Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Spectrum Management ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Statutory Interpretation ◽  
European Context ◽  
Bankruptcy Code ◽  
A Company ◽  
The U.S

The January, 27, 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision, FCC v. NextWave was, on the surface, nothing more than the high court's statutory interpretation of a single provision of the Bankruptcy Code. Deep down, however, NextWave tells an important spectrum management and regulatory story which is relevant in both the U.S. and European contexts. It is the story of a company which paid too much for wireless licenses at auction, and a story about a battle – political as well as legal – between government and industry for retention of the license. This same struggle is presently taking place in Europe in the wake of the 3G auctions. This Article reviews the recent NextWave decision and makes propositions about similarities in the European context.

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