SAGE Journal Articles
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Abstract: Scholars believe that justices on the U.S. Supreme Court strategically respond to—but rarely shape—public opinion. This article provides a new perspective on judicial behavior. Looking “off the bench,” I find evidence that justices actively shape perceptions of the Court through their public speeches. In particular, I employed a randomized field experiment and a randomized survey experiment to analyze the causal effects of attending a speech and reading about it in the news. For the field experiment, I assigned law students with reservations to a public speech by Justice Sotomayor to take a survey just before or just after the event. For the separate survey experiment, I assigned individuals in a treatment group to read news coverage of the speech before responding to survey questions. I find that, among attendees, justices improve their own favorability and change beliefs about the importance of law in judicial decision making. Among those who read of the speech, justices also change perceptions of the politicization of the Court and strengthen institutional loyalty. These findings have important implications for our understanding of judicial behavior and public perceptions of the Court.
Journal Article 10.2: Hall, M. E. K. (May 2014). Testing judicial power: The influence of the U.S. Supreme Court on federal incarceration. American Politics Research, 43, 83-108.
Abstract: The U.S. Supreme Court is traditionally thought to hold little influence over social or political change; however, recent evidence suggests the Court may wield significant power, especially with regard to criminal justice. Most studies evaluate judicial power by examining the effects of individual rulings on the implementation of specific policies, but this approach may overlook the broader impact of courts on society. Instead, I adopt an aggregate approach to test U.S. Supreme Court power. I find that aggregate conservative decision making by the Court is positively associated with long-term shifts in new admissions to U.S. federal prisons. These results suggest the Court possesses significant power to influence important social outcomes, at least in the context of the criminal justice system.
Abstract: How do the justices of the Supreme Court make their decisions? How does the Supreme Court of the United States make its decisions? The answer to these questions may not be the same. In studying judicial decision making, there has been a disconnection between individual and institutional levels of analysis. Lifetime tenure insulates individual justices and permits them to act on their substantive preferences. At the same time, the Court lacks the “sword and purse” and must rely on the other branches to fund or implement its directives. This study develops an integrative model to explain Supreme Court decision making. Using constitutional civil liberties and civil rights cases in the 1953 to 2000 period, conditions favorable to the attitudinal model, we find that institutional decision making is a function of attitudinal, strategic, and legal factors.
Abstract: The theoretical and empirical debate over the ability of the U.S. Supreme Court to influence public opinion through its decisions is far from settled. Scholars have examined the question using a variety of theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence, but there is no theoretical consensus, nor are the empirical studies without methodological weaknesses. We enter this debate in an attempt to bring some clarity to the theoretical approaches, overcome some of the methodological shortcomings, and bring a yet unstudied issue area, Court decisions on gay civil rights, under scrutiny. We argue that the ability of Court decisions to influence public opinion is a function of the salience of the issue, the political context, and case specific factors at the aggregate level. At the individual level these factors are also relevant, but citizen characteristics must also be taken into consideration. Our analysis of aggregate level and individual level opinion does indeed suggest that Court decisions can influence public opinion. However, the ability of Court decisions to influence public opinion is conditional. Our findings lend support to the legitimation hypothesis and the structural effects model. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings and suggestions for future research.