RAPID: Supreme Court Support and Democratic Values

美国最高法院是美国政治体系中最有权力的机构之一，对生命、自由和财产行使权力。虽然法律和政治传统赋予法院这些权力，但法院作出这些重大决定的合法性在很大程度上取决于公众接受法院“高于”政治。换句话说，尽管在做出裁决时存在“赢家”和“输家”，但普通民众似乎相信两件事：(1)法院成员是通过公平、民主的程序选出的；(2)意见分歧是由于相互冲突的宪法解释，而不是法官的赤裸裸的党派偏好。然而，这些假设近年来经受了严峻的考验。从残酷的、两极化的确认听证会，到对候选人是否适合服务的质疑，以及有争议的、非常明显的决定，一些公民可能不再认为最高法院是20世纪中期民主价值观的保障。这些发展提出了一个棘手的问题，即公众对最高法院的支持来源更普遍。我们调查公民的民主信念是否与他们对法院合法性的看法有关，反过来，这些态度是否受到法院判决的影响。为了探索公众对民主的看法与他们对法院的支持之间的关系，本研究将部署一项四波小组调查，使研究人员能够(1)通过严格的小组设计测试民主价值观是否与扩散支持相对应，(2)分析高度突出的决定是否会影响法院的合法性，以及这些决定是否会影响民主价值观与法院支持之间的关系。通过收集原始调查、小组和实验数据的组合，本研究提供了一个难得的机会，可以获得公众对一系列备受瞩目的决定的反应，这些决定很可能在2022年夏天发布，这标志着一段真诚的政治和民主动荡时期的结束。尽管政治学家担心民主倒退，但司法部门在加深公众对民主的玩世不恭方面所起的作用却没有得到足够的重视。这项研究不仅在理解公民尊重最高法院合法性的基本理论方面迈出了重要一步，而且还提供了一个机会来分析一个潜在的反多数主义政治机构如何可能对这个国家正在发生的民主危机做出贡献。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Supreme Court of the United States is one of the most powerful institutions within the American political system – exercising authority over life, liberty, and property. While granted these powers by law and political tradition, the Court’s legitimacy in making these weighty decisions rests, in no small part, on the public accepting that the Court is “above” politics. In other words, despite creating “winners” and “losers” when issuing decisions, ordinary people seem to believe two things: (1) the Court’s members were chosen via fair, democratic processes, and (2) differences in opinion are due to conflicting Constitutional interpretations rather than the naked partisan preferences of Justices. These assumptions, however, have been sorely tested in recent years. From brutal, polarized confirmation hearings to questions about candidates’ fitness to serve, and controversial, highly visible decisions, some citizens may not see the Court as the same backstop for democratic values that it was in the mid-20th Century. These developments raise thorny questions about the sources of public support for the Supreme Court more generally. We investigate whether citizens’ democratic beliefs are connected to their views about the Court’s legitimacy, and, in turn, whether those attitudes are affected by the Court’s decisions.To explore the relationship between public views about democracy and their support for the Court, this research will deploy a four-wave panel survey that will allow researchers to (1) test whether democratic values correspond to diffuse support via a rigorous panel design and, (2) analyze whether highly salient decisions affect the Court’s legitimacy, generally, and whether such decisions affect the relationship between democratic values and Court support, specifically. By collecting a combination of original survey, panel, and experimental data, this research supplies a rare opportunity to obtain contemporaneous public reactions to a series of high-profile decisions that the Court will most likely issue during the summer of 2022, which bookends a period of sincere political and democratic upheaval. Despite political scientists’ concern about democratic backsliding, insufficient attention has been paid to the role of the judiciary in deepening public cynicism about democracy. This research not only represents a significant step forward in understanding basic theories of why citizens respect the Supreme Court’s legitimacy, but it offers a chance to analyze how a potentially counter-majoritarian political institution may be contributing to this country’s ongoing crisis of democracy.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.