Confirmation politics and the legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court: Institutional loyalty, positivity bias, and the alito nomination

American Journal of Political Science

Volumn 53, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 139-155

  Gibson, James L ^a,b,c,d,e   Caldeira, Gregory A ^b  

^a WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^c Department of Political Science ^*

^d Centre for Comparative and International Politics

^e STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY   (South Africa)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 58049136804     PISSN: 00925853     EISSN: 15405907     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-5907.2008.00362.x     Document Type: Article

References (38)

1. Boynton, G. R., and Gerhard Loewenberg. 1973 The Development of Public Support for Parliament in Germany, 1951-1959 British Journal of Political Science 3 : 169 89.
2. Brisbin, Richard A. 1996 Slaying the Dragon: Segal, Spaeth and the Function of Law in Supreme Court Decision Making American Journal of Political Science 40 (4 1004 17.
3. Caldeira, Gregory A. 1987 Public Opinion and the U.S. Supreme Court: FDR's Court-Packing Plan American Political Science Review 81 (4 1139 53.
4. Caldeira, Gregory A., and James L. Gibson. 1992 The Etiology of Public Support for the Supreme Court American Journal of Political Science 36 (3 635 64.
5. Caldeira, Gregory A., and James L. Gibson. 1995 The Legitimacy of the Court of Justice in the European Union: Models of Institutional Support American Political Science Review 89 (2 356 76.
6. Caldeira, Gregory A., and Charles E. Smith, Jr. 1996 Campaigning for the Supreme Court: The Dynamics of Public Opinion on the Thomas Nomination Journal of Politics 58 (August 655 81.
7. Casey, Gregory. 1974 The Supreme Court and Myth: An Empirical Investigation Law and Society Review 8 (Spring 385 419.
8. Cohen, Jacob, Stephen G. West, Leona Aiken, and Patricia Cohen. 2003. Applied Multiple Regression/Correlation Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences. 3rd ed. Mahwah, NJ : Erlbaum Associates.
9. DCH e-Media. 2006. U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on Judge Samuel Alito's Nomination to the Supreme Court. Transcript of hearings from January 9 through January 13. Available at http://www.c-span.org/resources/ courtwatch.asp (May 2, 2006).
10. Druckman, James N. 2004 Political Preference Formation: Competition, Deliberation, and the (Ir)relevance of Framing Effects American Political Science Review 98 (4 671 86.
11. Gibson, James L. 2007 The Legitimacy of the United States Supreme Court in a Polarized Polity Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 4 (3 507 38.
12. Gibson, James L., and Gregory A. Caldeira. 1995 The Legitimacy of Transnational Legal Institutions: Compliance, Support, and the European Court of Justice American Journal of Political Science 39 (2 459 89.
13. Gibson, James L., and Gregory A. Caldeira. 1998 Changes in the Legitimacy of the European Court of Justice: A Post-Maastricht Analysis British Journal of Political Science 28 (1 63 91.
14. Gibson, James L., and Gregory A. Caldeira. 2003 Defenders of Democracy? Legitimacy, Popular Acceptance, and the South African Constitutional Court The Journal of Politics 65 (1 1 30.
15. Gibson, James L., and Gregory A. Caldeira. 2009 Knowing the Supreme Court? A Reconsideration of Public Ignorance of the High Court The Journal of Politics. Forthcoming.
16. Gibson, James L., Gregory A. Caldeira, and Vanessa Baird. 1998 On the Legitimacy of National High Courts American Political Science Review 92 (2 343 58.
17. Gibson, James L., Gregory A. Caldeira, and Lester Kenyatta Spence. 2003a The Supreme Court and the U.S. Presidential Election of 2000: Wounds, Self-Inflicted or Otherwise British Journal of Political Science 33 (4 535 56.
18. Gibson, James L., Gregory A. Caldeira, and Lester Kenyatta Spence. 2003b Measuring Attitudes toward the United States Supreme Court American Journal of Political Science 47 (2 354 67.
19. Gibson, James L., Gregory A. Caldeira, and Lester Kenyatta Spence. 2005 Why Do People Accept Public Policies They Oppose? Testing Legitimacy Theory with a Survey-Based Experiment Political Research Quarterly 58 (2 187 201.
20. Gimpel, James G., and Lewis S. Ringel. 1995 Understanding Court Nominee Evaluation and Approval: Mass Opinion in the Bork and Thomas Cases Political Behavior 17 (2 135 53.
21. Gimpel, James G., and Robin M. Wolpert. 1995 Rationalizing Support and Opposition to Supreme Court Nominations: The Role of Credentials Polity 28 (1 67 82.
22. Gimpel, James G., and Robin M. Wolpert. 1996 Opinion-Holding and Public Attitudes toward Controversial Supreme Court Nominees Political Research Quarterly 49 (1 163 76.
23. Guliuzza, Frank, III., Daniel J. Reagan, and David M. Barrett. 1994 The Senate Judiciary Committee and Supreme Court Nominees: Measuring the Dynamics of Confirmation Criteria The Journal of Politics 56 (3 773 87.
24. Hibbing, John R., and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse. 1995. Congress as Public Enemy: Public Attitudes toward American Political Institutions. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
25. Hutchings, Vincent L. 2001 Political Context, Issue Salience, and Selective Attentiveness: Constituent Knowledge of the Clarence Thomas Confirmation Vote The Journal of Politics 63 (3 846 68.
26. Kritzer, Herbert M., and John Voelker. 1998 Familiarity Breeds Respect: How Wisconsin Citizens View Their Courts Judicature 82 (September/October 58 64.
27. Loewenberg, Gerhard. 1971 The Influence of Parliamentary Behavior on Regime Stability Comparative Politics 3 : 177 200.
28. Maltese, John Anthony. 1995. The Selling of Supreme Court Nominees. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins Press.
29. Nicholson, Stephen P., and Robert M. Howard. 2003 Framing Support for the Supreme Court in the Aftermath of Bush v. Gore The Journal of Politics 65 (3 676 95.
30. Pew Research Center. 2005 Alito Viewed Positively, but Libby Takes a Toll Washington, DC : Pew Research Center for the People and Press.
31. Scheb, John M., II., and William Lyons. 2000 The Myth of Legality and Public Evaluation of the Supreme Court Social Science Quarterly 81 (4 928 40.
32. Segal, Jeffrey. 2006 Perceived Qualifications and Ideology of Supreme Court Nominees, 1937-2005 Available at http://ws.cc.stonybrook.edu/polsci/ jsegal/qualtable.pdf.
33. Segal, Jeffrey, and Albert Cover. 1989 Ideological Values and the Votes of Supreme Court Justices American Political Science Review 83 : 557 65.
34. Sniderman, Paul M., and Sean M. Theriault. 2004 The Structure of Political Argument and the Logic of Issue Framing In Studies in Public Opinion: Attitudes, Nonattitudes, Measurement Error, and Change, ed. Willem E. Saris and Paul M. Sniderman. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 133 65.
35. Taber, Charles S., and Milton Lodge. 2006 Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs American Journal of Political Science 50 (3 755 69.
36. Ward, Artemus. 2007 'I Think We've Exhausted This Topic': Executive Authority, the War on Terrorism, and the Senate's Failure during the Roberts and Alito Confirmation Hearings Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association.
37. Ward, Artemus. 2008 'Overly Deferential to Executive Power': Partisanship and Evasiveness in Justice Samuel Alito's Confirmation Hearing Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association.
38. Wolpert, Robin M., and James G. Gimpel. 1997 Information, Recall, and Accountability: The Electorate's Response to the Clarence Thomas Nomination Legislative Studies Quarterly 22 (4 535 50.