The effects of judicial review in American politics

At least since Robert Dahl's (1957) pathbreaking essay, Decision-Making in a Democracy: The Supreme Court as a National Policy-Maker," political scientists have invested tremendous energy in exploring linkages between the Supreme Court and its environment. This dissertation joins those efforts by offering studies of three such paths of influence °owing from the judiciary. In turn, I investigate the effects of Supreme Court decisions on public opinion, the role of judicial review in legislative decision-making, and the responsiveness of the media's agenda to Supreme Court decision-making. In all cases, the evidence suggests that the Supreme Court's influence extends beyond the legal world and into the larger political system

Confidence and Constraint: Public Opinion, Judicial Independence, and the Roberts Court

This Article uses statistical models to show the relationship between public opinion of the Supreme Court and the Court’s propensity to invalidate federal laws on constitutional grounds. Merril, Conway, and Ura analyze this connection to underscore the loss of judicial independence as a result of declining public opinion. The authors note this decline in public opinion allows the President and Congress to leverage public opinion against the Court in order to influence whether a federal law will be invalidated

Replication data for: The Supreme Court and Issue Attention: The Case of Homosexuality

Previous studies have shown that a small number of Supreme Court decisions that “rearrange[d] the . . . distribution of political benefits” have drawn the media’s attention to the underlying issues involved in those cases. This article provides an additional test of that empirical claim, examining the effects of the Supreme Court’s gay rights cases on media coverage of homosexuality from 1990 to 2005. The data indicate that Supreme Court decisions that expanded the scope of gay rights increased coverage of homosexuality in both The New York Times and USA Today, while cases that affirmed the existing scope of gay rights had no such effect

Replication data for: Backlash and Legitimation: Macro Political Responses to Supreme Court Decisions

Data and (Stata) code for replicating results reported in Backlash and Legitimation: Macro Political Responses to Supreme Court Decisions (Ura 2014) and its online appendix

Replication data for: Backlash and Legitimation: Macro Political Responses to Supreme Court Decisions

This paper offers a first attempt to develop and assess the competing predictions of the thermostatic model of public opinion and legitimation theory for the responses of public mood to Supreme Court decisions. While the thermostatic model predicts a negative relationship between the ideological direction of Supreme Court decisions and changes in public mood, legitimation theory predicts that changes in mood should be positively associated with the ideological content of the Court's actions. I assess these rival expectations by modeling the dynamic relationship between mood and cumulative judicial liberalism. The model estimates indicate a complex interaction between the Court and the mass public characterized by short-term backlash against Supreme Court decisions in public mood followed by long run movement toward the ideological positions taken by the Court. The results emphasize the legitimacy of the Court in American politics and point to a unique role for the Court in shaping public opinion

Replication data for: Desperately Seeking Sonia?: Latino Heterogeneity and Geographic Variation in Web Searches for Judge Sonia Sotomayor

Linguistic heritage, cultural similarities, and experiences as ethnic minorities link Latinos in the United States, but distinctions on national origin, nativity, and geographic distribution may yield political differences. Previous investigations of Latino heterogeneity as a catalyst for unity or division are limited to narrow issue domains and the set of elections characterized by within-group diversity. It remains unclear whether Latinos will respond cohesively to co-ethnic cues in national politics. Using data state-level web search volumes related to Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court, we assess the extent to which Latino national origin within the states corresponds to expressed interest in her. We find the relative size of Puerto Rican population predicts interest in Sotomayor’s nomination above the positive effects predicted by panethnic Latino population. The results indicate heterogeneity in Latino political orientations, and simultaneously show differential responses to co-ethnic cues among Latinos may be reinforcing rather than oppositional