Creating a State-Level Public Opinion Data Base for Law and Courts Scholarship: New Frontiers in Research on the Public's Views of Third Branch Politics

社会科学家对美国的法律和政治至少了解两件重要的事情。首先，舆论很重要。公众更喜欢的--以及它将容忍的--是法律和政治的许多方面的一个重要因素，就像公众愿意向法律机构提供支持一样，特别是在他们做出不受欢迎的决定时。其次，州政府很重要。美国是联邦制，所以各州总是很重要。但当涉及到法律时，绝大多数法律活动都发生在个别州。因此，美国各州的民意是重要的。然而，在社会科学中，大型调查数据库更多地关注普通政治(主要是选举)，而不是法律和政治，因此没有就与法律和政治有关的问题对美国人民进行调查。这个项目将产生一个关于这个话题的州民意数据库，供不同理论焦点的学者使用。该项目将一种新开发的统计方法与现有的专注于法律问题的调查数据库相结合，该方法可以从全国调查数据中得出州一级的估计值，该项目有望创建一个衡量各州居民对众多法律和政治问题感受的宝库。例如，这个项目将允许评估美国各州选择和保留法官的方法是否会对公众对法律和法院的态度产生任何影响。通过创建和传播州一级关于法律和法律机构的民意措施，该项目将刺激新的努力，以了解司法机构与其选民、美国各州人民之间的关系。

Social scientists know at least two important things about law and politics in the United States. First, public opinion matters. What the public prefers - and what it will tolerate - is an important element of many aspects of law and politics, as in the support the public is willing to extend to legal institutions, especially when they make unpopular decisions. Second, states matter. The U.S. is a federal system, so states always matter. But when it comes to law, the vast majority of legal activity takes place in the individual states. It follows, therefore, that public opinion in each of the American states is important.However, in the social sciences, the large survey data bases have been far more concerned with ordinary politics (primarily electoral), rather than law and politics, and therefore have not surveyed the American people on issues relevant to those concerned with law and politics.This project will produce a state public opinion data base on this topic that can be used by scholars of widely varying theoretical foci. Marrying a newly developed statistical methodology that can derive state-level estimates from national survey data to an existing survey data base focused on legal matters, this project promises to create a treasure-trove of measures of how the residents of individual states feel about numerous issues of law and politics. For instance, this project will allow the assessment of whether the methods of selecting and retaining judges in the American states have any consequences for public attitudes toward law and courts. By creating and disseminating state-level measures of public opinion on law and legal institutions, this project will stimulate new efforts to understand the relationships between the judiciaries and their constituents, the people of the American states.