The Effect of Public Opinion on the Voting Behavior of Supreme Court Justices (2014)
Undergraduate: Kristen Rosano
Faculty Advisor: Isaac Unah
Department: Political Science
Previous research has shown that public opinion has an effect on the voting of Supreme Court justices, but this research aimed to add to this knowledge by looking more specifically at cases in which justices seem to vote against their typical ideological leanings. For the quantitative portion of this paper, regression analysis established a relationship between public opinion and Supreme Court justice votes, both in the aggregate and for seven liberal and six conservative justices individually. In addition, justices appear to respond less strongly to public opinion when the Court is more polarized. For the qualitative portion, Harry Blackmun¿s papers were analyzed for cases in which he appeared to ¿switch.¿ In Planned Parenthood v. Danforth (and the related Roe v. Wade), he discussed how his vote was guided by his hopes for the future of the country, indicating that he was affected by public opinion. Thurgood Marshall, on the other hand, has discussed the importance of neutrality on the Court, while Antonin Scalia believes that justices should respond even more to the public than they do now. This research has implications in American politics because it indicates that the public can affect the highest court in the United States.