Reforming the Bench: Public Support for Supreme Court Institutional Change

• In Event: Public Opinion's Effect on Courts

Abstract

In the fall of 2021, Gallup polling reported that the Supreme Court hit its lowest point in more than two decades - 40% in September, down steeply from a ten-year high of 58% the previous year. Theories of separation of powers, and Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, suggest that secure public opinion is vital for the Supreme Court’s ability to see its decisions are implemented. Typically, the Supreme Court is the most well-liked of the three institutions, bolstering claims of support for its decisions.

In this study, we ask what happens when support for the Supreme Court, which has no formal powers to enact its decisions, drops. Specifically, we are interested in public support for reforming the court by adding justices, enacting term limits, and other reforms. We posit that dropping support for the Court will align with an increase in support for Congressional and Executive proposals for reform actions. We explore this question in two ways through a survey experiment. First, we survey approval of the Court and approval of reforms. Second, we construct a survey experiment which displays news articles with varying levels of Supreme Court approval ratings from 80% to 20% in 20-point increments. The experiment component allows us to test whether knowledge of decreased public approval matters in opinions on the reform of the judicial institution.

We hypothesize that as approval ratings drop, the public will support reforming the Court. At the lowest levels of support, we argue respondents will approve of the more dramatic proposals of reform of the judiciary.

Authors

• Matthew D Montgomery, Texas Christian University

• Natalie C Rogol, Rhode Island College