We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 August 2020
Chapter 1 sets the scholarly and popular context for explaining how citizens evaluate the United States Supreme Court. It conceptualizes the core outcome of interest throughout the book: public support for Court-curbing, or alterations to the Supreme Court’s powers, structures, and institutional arrangements. We compare this concept to judicial independence and judicial power, and we distinguish it from institutional legitimacy. Chapter 1 also makes important connections to the institutions literature, explaining how a politicized foundation to Court-curbing represents a constraint on judicial independence. We characterize core debates in the scholarly literature centering on “policy (or outcome) versus process.” Policy-based perspectives posit that citizen agreement or disagreement with the Court’s rulings or policy direction will influence support for Court-curbing. Process-based perspectives suggest that non-policy factors such as democratic values, perceptions that the Court is fair and impartial (as opposed to politicized), and knowledge and awareness (via a “positivity bias”) all serve to enhance institutional support for the Court.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
