The Separation of Powers: Does Public Opinion Matter to the Supreme Court?

Abstract

The Supreme Court is an institution much revered in American political culture. This study will examine the role of that public support in the decision making of Supreme Court justices in the United States. I will go about assessing this first by measuring the level of public support for the Supreme Court as measured by the General Social Survey (GSS) and cross-tabulating it with data on the frequency of legislation invalidation. Ultimately, I show that the Supreme Court does in fact respond to public opinion, using public support as a power base to strike down a greater number of federal laws. In other words, the Supreme Court is more likely to invalidate a law when it is more popular than the incumbent legislature. My results indicate that there is, in fact, a positive and significant correlation in the data that supports our hypothesis.