RAPID: The Dynamics of Minority Support for the Supreme Court.

公众对最高法院的信任对美国民主的健康至关重要。然而，最近的争议给法院的合法性带来了前所未有的挑战。由于对法院的信任处于历史低点，最近的研究表明，法院的合法性可能比之前认为的更加脆弱，评论员和学者都发出了越来越可怕的警告，即法院在非常重要的案件中的裁决有可能侵蚀其公众支持的基础。然而，在关于法院公众地位的这一日益增多的讨论中，很大程度上忽略了该国种族和族裔少数群体的观点。因此，不清楚少数群体公民是否继续对法院给予高度尊重，以及法院的裁决对这种支持有什么影响(如果有的话)。为了探索少数族裔公民对最高法院的支持动态，该项目将采用调查研究和精英访谈相结合的方式。一项具有全国代表性的美国人调查将深入了解公众对最高法院的支持状况，对非洲裔美国人、西班牙裔美国人和美国原住民的过度抽样将使人们能够详细分析最高法院在少数族裔公民中的地位。为了了解一项重要的法院裁决对少数族裔公民对法院的看法的影响，该项目将进一步关注美洲原住民的态度。为了做到这一点，该项目将以两种方式利用法院预期的2023年在一个备受瞩目的案件中的裁决。首先，在法院作出裁决后，将通过第二波调查重新联系美洲原住民调查受访者，从而提供机会评估裁决对法院在受裁决影响最大的人中的支持率的影响。其次，在最高法院裁决之前和之后对美洲原住民部落领导人的采访将使人们深入了解裁决对少数族裔社区政治领导人观点的影响。这项研究的发现将对最高法院在美国政治的这个关键时刻与少数族裔的关系产生重要的见解。这一裁决反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Public trust in the Supreme Court is vital for the health of American democracy. Recent controversies, however, have brought unprecedented challenges to the Court’s legitimacy. With trust in the Court at historic lows and recent research suggesting the Court’s legitimacy may be more fragile than previously thought, commentators and scholars alike are raising increasingly dire warnings that the Court’s decisions in highly salient cases have the potential to erode its foundation of public support. Largely missing from this growing discussion of the Court’s public standing, however, is the perspective of the country’s racial and ethnic minorities. As a result, it is unclear whether minority citizens continue to hold the Court in high regard and what impact, if any, the Court’s decisions have on that support. To explore the dynamics of support for the Supreme Court among minority citizens, the project will employ a combination of survey research and elite interviews. A nationally-representative survey of Americans will provide insights into the state of public support for the Supreme Court, with an oversampling of African-American, Hispanic, and Native American respondents allowing for detailed analyses of the Court’s standing among minority citizens. To understand the effect of a significant Court decision on minority citizens’ views of the Court, the project will further focus on the attitudes of Native Americans. To do so, the project will leverage the Court’s anticipated 2023 ruling in a high-profile case in two ways. First, Native American survey respondents will be re-contacted after the Court’s decision with a second wave of the survey, thereby providing an opportunity to evaluate the impact of the ruling on the Court’s support among those most directly affected by the decision. Second, interviews with leaders of Native American tribes both before and after the Court’s decision will grant insights into the ruling’s impact on the views of minority communities’ political leaders. The findings from this research will yield important insights into the Supreme Court’s relationship with minorities at this critical juncture in American politics.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.