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

关于美国的法律和政治，社会科学家至少知道两件重要的事情。首先，舆论很重要。公众喜欢什么——以及它将容忍什么——是法律和政治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，尤其是当他们做出不受欢迎的决定时。其次，国家很重要。美国是一个联邦制国家，所以各州总是很重要。但说到法律，绝大多数的法律活动都发生在各个州。由此可见，美国每个州的民意都很重要。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，因此没有就与法律和政治相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主题的国家民意数据库，可以被广泛不同理论焦点的学者使用。该项目结合了一种新开发的统计方法，可以从国家调查数据中得出州一级的估计，并将其与现有的侧重于法律事务的调查数据库相结合，有望创建一个衡量各州居民对众多法律和政治问题看法的宝库。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。通过制定和传播关于法律和法律机构的州级公众舆论措施，该项目将促进新的努力，以了解司法机构与其选民，即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.