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

社会科学家至少知道美国法律和政治的两件重要事情。首先，公众舆论很重要。公众喜欢什么--以及他们将容忍什么--是法律和政治的许多方面的一个重要因素，就像公众愿意给予法律的机构的支持一样，特别是当它们做出不受欢迎的决定时。第二，国家很重要。美国是一个联邦体系，所以各州总是很重要。但是当涉及到法律时，绝大多数的法律的活动发生在各个州。因此，美国各州的公众舆论都很重要。然而，在社会科学领域，大型调查数据库更关注的是普通政治（主要是选举），而不是法律和政治，因此没有对美国民众进行有关法律和政治问题的调查。本项目将建立一个关于这一主题的州民意数据库可以被不同理论领域的学者所使用。结合新开发的统计方法，可以从国家调查数据中获得州一级的估计，以现有的调查数据库集中在法律的事项，这个项目有望创造一个宝库的措施，如何个别国家的居民对许多法律和政治问题的看法。例如，该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的机构的民意措施，该项目将激发新的努力来了解司法机构及其选民（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.