The Supreme Court’s effect on public opinion for cases with high and low salience

open_access
Open Access
Author:
Montone, Richard
Area of Honors:
Political Science
Degree:
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Christopher Zorn, Thesis Supervisor
Gretchen G Casper, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
Supreme Court
Public Opinion
Case Salience
Abstract:
I examine the effects on public opinion of the decisions handed down by the United States Supreme Court in both high and low salience cases. Scholars have begun referring to the Supreme Court of the United States as an educational institution, whose role is to teach the public about constitutionality. My thesis assesses the extents to which this is taking place by looking at four different Court cases with varying levels of case salience. The cases I examine are District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), Caetano v. Massachusetts (2015), National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning (2014), and National Labor Relations Board v. SW General Inc. (2017). The four cases I consider fall under two categories: civil rights cases and governmental powers cases. I measure case salience using the method developed by Collins and Cooper (2016) which measures salience-based media coverage in national newspapers. Using public opinion data on attitudes towards gun rights and executive power, I examine the association between political, economic, and demographic factors and Americas’ attitudes towards these topics before and after the Court’s decisions. The public opinion data used to assess changes before, and after the decision is from the Pew Research Center and The American Panel Survey developed by Washington University in St. Louis. My findings suggest that the Court’s high-salience decisions shape the contours of public opinion, but that they do so more significantly in cases involving questions of civil rights and liberties.