Citizens, Courts, and Confirmations : : Positivity Theory and the Judgments of the American People / / Gregory A. Caldeira, James L. Gibson.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Gibson, James L.,; Caldeira, Gregory A.,
• MitwirkendeR: Caldeira, Gregory A.,; Gibson, James L.,; Spence, Lester Kenyatta,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2009]; ©2009
• Year of Publication: 2009
• Edition: Course Book
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (240 p.) :; 7 line illus. 29 tables.

In recent years the American public has witnessed several hard-fought battles over nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court. In these heated confirmation fights, candidates' legal and political philosophies have been subject to intense scrutiny and debate. Citizens, Courts, and Confirmations examines one such fight--over the nomination of Samuel Alito--to discover how and why people formed opinions about the nominee, and to determine how the confirmation process shaped perceptions of the Supreme Court's legitimacy. Drawing on a nationally representative survey, James Gibson and Gregory Caldeira use the Alito confirmation fight as a window into public attitudes about the nation's highest court. They find that Americans know far more about the Supreme Court than many realize, that the Court enjoys a great deal of legitimacy among the American people, that attitudes toward the Court as an institution generally do not suffer from partisan or ideological polarization, and that public knowledge enhances the legitimacy accorded the Court. Yet the authors demonstrate that partisan and ideological infighting that treats the Court as just another political institution undermines the considerable public support the institution currently enjoys, and that politicized confirmation battles pose a grave threat to the basic legitimacy of the Supreme Court.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Figures and Tables -- Preface -- CHAPTER ONE. Introduction -- CHAPTER TWO. Knowing about Courts -- CHAPTER THREE. The Popular Legitimacy of the United States Supreme Court -- CHAPTER FOUR. Institutional Loyalty, Positivity Bias, and the Alito Nomination -- CHAPTER FIVE. A Dynamic Test of the Positivity Bias Hypothesis -- CHAPTER SIX. Concluding Thoughts, Theory, and Policy -- APPENDIX A. Survey Design: The 2005 Survey -- APPENDIX B. The Representativeness of the Panel Sample -- APPENDIX C. The Supreme Court and the U.S. Presidential Election of 2000: Wounds, Self-Inflicted or Otherwise? -- References -- Index