Salience Supreme Court

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Salience, Support and the Perception of the Supreme Court The Supreme Court is generally regarded as the weakest branch of government despite the institution’s reputation for being legalistic, nonpartisan and apolitical. The Court’s reputation, or institutional legitimacy, relies heavily on the general public’s perception and approval of their case decisions (Nicholson and Hansford 2014; Bybee 2010; Malhortha and Jessee 2014). This being because, when the judiciary was created, it was primarily given interpretative powers, leaving their decisions to be enforced through the other two branches of government. To make up for the institution’s lack of enforcement ability, there is a dire need for the Supreme Court to maximize the scope of their …show more content…
A leading argument in this body of literature attributes the Court being viewed as a more legalistic institution because support for its decisions tend to be higher than that of any other branch of government (Easton 1965; Epstein and Knight 1998; Nicholson and Hansford 2014; Gibson 1989; Gibson and Caldeira 2011). Additionally, it is argued that there is a “positivity bias” when dealing with the Supreme Court due to institution loyalty and the notion that the public is more inclined to support the institution because they have largely remained in support of past decisions (Gibson and Caldeira 1992; Gibson 1989; Gibson and Caldeira 2011). Moreover, because the public remains in support of the Supreme Court’s decisions, it is generally believed that policies set forth in the decisions are received better when coming from the Court rather than when they are attributed to other branches of government (Mondak 1990; Stout, Markel and Allen 2006; Epstein and Knight 1998). Perhaps one of the most important reasons the public views the Supreme Court as more of a legal institution than a political one is because they are not conditioned to support the Court based on ideology or policy expectations (Gibson and Caldeira 1992). While ideology and policy preferences of individual justices do play a role in the decision-making process, because the Supreme Court needs to be viewed as legitimate and legalistic, justices frame their opinions with …show more content…
On the other hand, there is less literature arguing that the Supreme Court is more of a political institution than a legal one, but existing information suggests that the reason why is because individuals use perceived ideology to assess the Supreme Court (Cameron and Kastellec 2016). The underlying assumption being that because the public has their own preferences when it comes to the kinds of policies they would like to see, and use that lens to evaluate the decisions the Court hands down (Baum 2016; Epstein and Knight 1998; Nicholson and Hansford 2014; Farnsworth 2007). Moreover, because the public also remains ill-informed about most aspect of cases that are not of interest or concern to them, they use trusted credible sources and party cues to assess the Supreme Court decisions (Nicholson and Hansford 2014; Gibson 1989; Gibson and Caldeira
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