What This Study Does
This research maps how public confidence in the Supreme Court has changed and why those changes now split sharply along partisan lines. The analysis proceeds in three steps to show both the scope and the mechanisms behind declining legitimacy.
📊 National Surveys and a Six-Wave Panel (2012–2024)
- Compiles a dataset of national surveys from 2012 through 2024 that track diffuse support for the Court and reveal growing divergence between Democrats and Republicans.
- Examines an original six-wave panel survey to demonstrate that partisan differences in Court attitudes are stable over time, not fleeting reactions.
🔍 How Partisanship Shapes Court Evaluations
- Identifies direct and indirect pathways through which partisanship affects legitimacy.
- Finds that Democrats are:
- More cynical about the Court’s institution,
- More likely to disapprove of specific Court outputs, and
- More inclined to view obedience to law differently than Republicans.
- These patterns together produce a profound partisan gap in both specific and diffuse support.
🧠A New Measure Shows Fatalism Lowers Support
- Introduces a new measure of specific support for the Court to reassess the link between concrete outputs and broader legitimacy.
- Demonstrates that “fatalistic” attitudes—beliefs that the Court is unresponsive or incapable of producing fair outcomes—contribute to low levels of legitimacy.
- Documents that Democratic pessimism toward the Court has erased decades of previously held positivity and goodwill.
⚖️ Why It Matters
The combination of durable partisan sorting and widespread fatalism implies the Court’s authority now rests on weak, polarized foundations. That shift has implications for compliance, institutional stability, and how scholars and policymakers should think about judicial legitimacy going forward.
