Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-14-2019
Department 1
Political Science
Abstract
The manner in which political institutions convey their policy outcomes can have important implications for how the public views institutions' policy decisions. This paper explores whether the way in which the U.S. Supreme Court communicates its policy decrees affects how favorably members of the public assess its decisions. Specifically, we investigate whether attributing a decision to the nation's High Court or to an individual justice influences the public's agreement with the Court's rulings. Using an experimental design, we find that when a Supreme Court outcome is ascribed to the institution as a whole, rather than to a particular justice, people are more apt to agree with the policy decision. We also find that identifying the gender of the opinion author affects public agreement under certain conditions. Our findings have important implications for how public support for institutional policymaking operates, as well as the dynamics of how the Supreme Court manages to accumulate and maintain public goodwill.
Copyright Note
This is the author's version of the work. This publication appears in Gettysburg College's institutional repository by permission of the copyright owner for personal use, not for redistribution.
DOI
10.1111/lasr.12401
Version
Post-Print
Recommended Citation
Boddery, Scott S., Moyer, Laura P., and Yates, Jeff. 2019. "Naming Names: The Impact of Supreme Court Majority Opinion Attribution on Citizen Assessment of Policy Outcomes." Law & Society Review 53 (2): 353-385.
Required Publisher's Statement
This article is available on the publisher's website.
Included in
American Politics Commons, Public Policy Commons, Supreme Court of the United States Commons