Data for "Institutional hybridity and policy-motivated reasoning structure public evaluations of the Supreme Court"

Listed in Datasets

By Shana Kushner Gadarian1, Logan R Strother2ORCID logo

1. Syracuse University 2. Purdue University

We find strong evidence that the Court’s hybrid legal-political nature enables a unique form of policy-motivated reasoning.

Additional materials available

Version 1.0 - published on 12 Sep 2023 doi:10.4231/0BTG-8D39 - cite this Archived on 13 Oct 2023

Licensed under CC0 1.0 Universal

0 citation(s)

237 total view(s), 50 download(s)

Description

How does the public assess the Supreme Court and its work? Using data from three surveys conducted over a span of ten years, we show that individuals’ policy preferences drive evaluations of the Court and its willingness to reform the Court. We find strong evidence that the Court’s hybrid legal-political nature enables a unique form of policy-motivated reasoning: respondents who agree with Court outputs view the Court and its work as more “legal” in nature, while those who disagree view both as more “political.” Our findings stand in contrast to longstanding views in the literature that the public views the Court as a fundamentally different sort of institution that stands largely separate from politics. The fact that policy attitudes powerfully inform the public’s assessment of the Court has crucial implications for the ongoing debates over Supreme Court power.

This file contains replication materials for the paper "Institutional hybridity and policy-motivated reasoning structure public evaluations of the Supreme Court". The *.dta files archived here contain all of the data used in this paper. Data from Study 1 come from the American National Election Survey (ANES). The ANES in 2012 interviewed 5,916 respondents using an address-based sample using a dual mode (face-to-face and Internet) study format. Data for Study 2 come from the UMass Poll. The UMass survey had 1000 respondents interviewed by YouGov who were drawn to be representative of respondents in the 2019 American Community Survey. Data for Study 3 are original; they were collected by the authors in 2018. This is a non-probability sample consisting of 1,000 Americans drawn from SSI’s panel. The survey was fielded between May 9 and May 21, 2018. For further details, see the article (especially the "Methods" section), and the "Read-me" and codebook files here. 

Cite this work

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

Tags

  1. motivated reasoning
  2. polarization
  3. Political Science (Dept)
  4. public opinion
  5. Supreme Court
The Purdue University Research Repository (PURR) is a university core research facility provided by the Purdue University Libraries and the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research and Partnerships, with support from additional campus partners.
In accordance with Purdue policies, all persons have equal access to Purdue University’s educational programs, services and activities, without regard to race, religion, color, sex, age, national origin or ancestry, genetic information, marital status, parental status, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, disability or status as a veteran. See Purdue’s Nondiscrimination Policy Statement. If you have any questions or concerns regarding these policies, please contact the Office of the Vice President for Ethics and Compliance at vpec@purdue.edu or 765-494-5830.