3 - Going Public on Decided Cases

Summary

Chapter 3 explores presidential rhetoric on cases that have already been decided by the Supreme Court. To investigate this, we examine all mentions of Supreme Court cases, by month, from 1953 to 2017. We differentiate written and spoken comments and show that while the former are used almost exclusively to direct the implementation of the Court’s decisions, the latter are designed to allow presidents to take positions on Court cases that are important to their electoral bases given the primacy of presidential speeches to presidents’ permanent campaigns for public support. Often, presidents will comment on recently decided cases to speak to issues that are timely and salient to the national policy conversation in an effort to guide those conversations. Indeed, we find that the presidents are especially likely to discuss Supreme Court cases during reelection years and when those cases garner media attention.