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Association: Name: The Midwest Political Science Association URL: http://www.indiana.edu/~mpsa/
Citation: URL: http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p83419_index.html Direct Link: HTML Code:

Wood, Frederick. "Public Opinion and State Supreme Courts: Do Justices Listen to the People?" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the The Midwest Political Science Association, Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, Illinois, Apr 15, 2004 <Not Available>. 2009-05-26 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p83419_index.html>

Wood, F. S. , 2004-04-15 "Public Opinion and State Supreme Courts: Do Justices Listen to the People?" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the The Midwest Political Science Association, Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, Illinois <Not Available>. 2009-05-26 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p83419_index.html

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript Review Method: Peer Reviewed Abstract: Public Opinion and State Supreme Courts: Do Justices Listen to the People? While scholars have investigated the relationship between the Supreme Court and public opinion (Barnum (1985), Mishler & Sheehan (1993, 1996), Segal & Norpoth (1994); Flemming & Wood (1997)) the study of its effect on the judicial behavior of State Supreme Courts has been limited. The lack of debate over the responsiveness of State Supreme Court justices has been primarily because of the assumptions that the selection method of a justice and the proximity of that justice to a popular election is a key influence upon judicial behavior. Those justices that have to run for office in elections must to some degree be responsive to the electorate in order to be re-elected and previous literature has shown that the electoral process has had an impact upon their voting behavior (Hall 1987, 1992). Furthermore, the claims of advocates, such as the American Judicature Society, that the merit selection system minimizes the influence of politics upon those that aspire to become justices and reduces the amount of economic and political pressure that is placed upon justices while on the bench has gone unexamined (Reddick 2002). Due to recent scholarship, Brace et al. (2002), the General Social Survey can be used to create measures of state level public opinion by splitting the survey at the state level. These divisions create a representative sample from which an estimate of public opinion can be derived and can be applied to the study of judicial behavior of judges on the State Supreme Courts. Using these state level measures of public opinion and a test version of the State Supreme Court Database, I will examine the impact of a state’s public opinion on a justice’s votes in cases involving issues such as the death penalty and freedom of speech. Other contextual variables, such as the method of judicial selection, partisan environment of the state, and method of opinion assignment, will be included in my analysis. Furthermore, this study will test the hypothesis of whether judges who join the bench by electoral means are more responsive to the electorate or whether judges who are chosen by merit plans are just as responsive to the desires of the public than those who are democratically elected. The results of this paper will help those who study state politics or judicial behavior further understand the impact of judicial selection methods, while introducing the concept of state level public opinion to the judicial decision-making literature.

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