Partisan Bias in Evaluations of the Supreme Court
Gallup has released data showing that partisan evaluations of the Supreme Court “flip flop” after a presidential election. Essentially, partisans like the Court better when their president is in control. Now, in 2000-2001, one might attribute these trends to the Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore. But the same is true in 2008-2009, and no such event has happened. I don’t think that the Sotomayor nomination matters much.
This is reminiscent of how Democrats and Republicans changed their evaluations of Bernanke after the November election.
Comments
John, don’t you think the SCOTUS is the one institution where the public’s “approval rating” is of no relevance whatsoever? Most people don’t follow the court’s activities at all, those who do generally only hear about the high-profile cases, and most of those people are not schooled in the legal technicalities needed to understand what the decisions really mean.
And even if a small % of Americans have an informed opinion of how “well” the court is doing, the justices are in place for life so what difference does it make?
Posted by: Dan Tarrant | June 25, 2009 02:43 PM