IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jlstud/doi10.1086-687365.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Supreme Court, the Media, and Public Opinion: Comparing Experimental and Observational Methods

Author

Listed:
  • Katerina Linos
  • Kimberly Twist

Abstract

Can Supreme Court rulings change Americans' policy views? Prior experimental and observational studies come to conflicting conclusions because of methodological limitations. We argue that existing studies overlook the media's critical role in communicating Court decisions and theorize that major decisions change Americans' opinions most when the media offer one-sided coverage supportive of the Court majority. We fielded nationally representative surveys shortly before and after two major Supreme Court decisions on health care and immigration and connected our public opinion data with six major television networks' coverage of each decision. We find that Court decisions can influence national opinion and increase support for policies the Court upholds as constitutional. These effects were largest among people who received one-sided information. To address selection concerns, we combined this observational study with an experiment and find that people who first heard about the Court decisions through the media and through the experiment responded in similar ways.

Suggested Citation

  • Katerina Linos & Kimberly Twist, 2016. "The Supreme Court, the Media, and Public Opinion: Comparing Experimental and Observational Methods," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 45(2), pages 223-254.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlstud:doi:10.1086/687365
    DOI: 10.1086/687365
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/687365
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/687365
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/687365?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alan S. Gerber & Dean Karlan & Daniel Bergan, 2009. "Does the Media Matter? A Field Experiment Measuring the Effect of Newspapers on Voting Behavior and Political Opinions," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(2), pages 35-52, April.
    2. Page, Benjamin I. & Shapiro, Robert Y. & Dempsey, Glenn R., 1987. "What Moves Public Opinion?," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 81(1), pages 23-43, March.
    3. Johnson, Timothy R. & Martin, Andrew D., 1998. "The Public's Conditional Response to Supreme Court Decisions," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 92(2), pages 299-309, June.
    4. Stephen P. Nicholson, 2003. "The Political Environment and Ballot Proposition Awareness," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 47(3), pages 403-410, July.
    5. Fox, Justin & Stephenson, Matthew C., 2011. "Judicial Review as a Response to Political Posturing," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 105(2), pages 397-414, May.
    6. Matthew C. Stephenson, 2004. "Court of Public Opinion: Government Accountability and Judicial Independence," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 20(2), pages 379-399, October.
    7. Franklin, Charles H. & Kosaki, Liane C., 1989. "Republican Schoolmaster: The U.S. Supreme Court, Public Opinion, and Abortion," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 83(3), pages 751-771, September.
    8. Stefano DellaVigna & Ethan Kaplan, 2007. "The Fox News Effect: Media Bias and Voting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(3), pages 1187-1234.
    9. Dan Simon & Nicholas Scurich, 2011. "Lay Judgments of Judicial Decision Making," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 8(4), pages 709-727, December.
    10. Chong, Dennis & Druckman, James N., 2007. "Framing Public Opinion in Competitive Democracies," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 101(4), pages 637-655, November.
    11. Jason Barabas & Jennifer Jerit, 2009. "Estimating the Causal Effects of Media Coverage on Policy‐Specific Knowledge," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(1), pages 73-89, January.
    12. Nelson, Thomas E. & Clawson, Rosalee A. & Oxley, Zoe M., 1997. "Media Framing of a Civil Liberties Conflict and Its Effect on Tolerance," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 91(3), pages 567-583, September.
    13. Caldeira, Gregory A., 1986. "Neither the Purse Nor the Sword: Dynamics of Public Confidence in the Supreme Court," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 80(4), pages 1209-1226, December.
    14. James N. Druckman & Thomas J. Leeper, 2012. "Learning More from Political Communication Experiments: Pretreatment and Its Effects," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 56(4), pages 875-896, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alex Rees-Jones & Kyle Rozema, 2023. "Price Isn’t Everything: Behavioral Response Around Changes In Sin Taxes," National Tax Journal, University of Chicago Press, vol. 76(1), pages 5-35.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Campante, Filipe R. & Hojman, Daniel A., 2013. "Media and polarization," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 79-92.
    2. Grant D. Jacobsen, 2019. "How do different sources of policy analysis affect policy preferences? Experimental evidence from the United States," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 52(3), pages 315-342, September.
    3. Stephane Wolton, 2019. "Are Biased Media Bad for Democracy?," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 63(3), pages 548-562, July.
    4. David Bartolini & Agnese Sacchi & Domenico Scalera & Alberto Zazzaro, 2023. "Voters’ Distance, Information Bias and Politicians’ Salary," Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, Springer;Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association), vol. 9(2), pages 637-664, July.
    5. Monika Buetler & Michel André Maréchal, 2007. "Framing Effects in Political Decision Making: Evidence from a Natural Voting Experiment," CESifo Working Paper Series 1940, CESifo.
    6. Juan Pablo Atal & José Ignacio Cuesta & Felipe González & Cristóbal Otero, 2024. "The Economics of the Public Option: Evidence from Local Pharmaceutical Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 114(3), pages 615-644, March.
    7. Simon P. Anderson & John McLaren, 2012. "Media Mergers And Media Bias With Rational Consumers," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 831-859, August.
    8. Redlicki, B., 2017. "Spreading Lies," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1747, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    9. Schnellenbach, Jan & Schubert, Christian, 2015. "Behavioral political economy: A survey," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PB), pages 395-417.
    10. Giovanni Facchini & Anna Maria Mayda & Riccardo Puglisi, 2017. "Illegal immigration and media exposure: evidence on individual attitudes," IZA Journal of Migration and Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 7(1), pages 1-36, December.
    11. Ronald McDonald & Xuxin Mao, 2015. "Forecasting the 2015 General Election with Internet Big Data: An Application of the TRUST Framework," Working Papers 2016_03, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    12. Barrera, Oscar & Guriev, Sergei & Henry, Emeric & Zhuravskaya, Ekaterina, 2020. "Facts, alternative facts, and fact checking in times of post-truth politics," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    13. Marco Manacorda & Andrea Tesei, 2020. "Liberation Technology: Mobile Phones and Political Mobilization in Africa," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(2), pages 533-567, March.
    14. Jetter, Michael, 2017. "Terrorism and the Media: The Effect of US Television Coverage on Al-Qaeda Attacks," IZA Discussion Papers 10708, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Jo Thori Lind & Dominic Rohner, 2017. "Knowledge is Power: A Theory of Information, Income and Welfare Spending," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 84(336), pages 611-646, October.
    16. Chen, Daniel L. & Levonyan, Vardges & Yeh, Susan, 2016. "Policies Affect Preferences: Evidence from Random Variation in Abortion Jurisprudence," IAST Working Papers 16-58, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).
    17. Ghazaryan, Armine & Giulietti, Corrado & Wahba, Jackline, 2022. "Terror headlines and voting," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 216(C).
    18. Antoine Loeper & Jakub Steiner & Colin Stewart, 2014. "Influential Opinion Leaders," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 124(581), pages 1147-1167, December.
    19. Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro & Matt Taddy, 2019. "Measuring Group Differences in High‐Dimensional Choices: Method and Application to Congressional Speech," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 87(4), pages 1307-1340, July.
    20. Yann Algan & Quoc-Anh Do & Nicolò Dalvit & Alexis Le Chapelain & Yves Zenou, 2015. "How Social Networks Shape Our Beliefs: A Natural Experiment among Future French Politicians," Working Papers hal-03459820, HAL.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:jlstud:doi:10.1086/687365. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLS .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.