Skip to main content
University of Michigan Press
Fulcrum logo

You can access this title through a library that has purchased it. More information about purchasing is available at our website.

Share the story of what Open Access means to you

a graphic of a lock that is open, the universal logo for open access

University of Michigan needs your feedback to better understand how readers are using openly available ebooks. You can help by taking a short, privacy-friendly survey.

  1. Home
  2. The Limits of Legitimacy: Dissenting Opinions, Media Coverage, and Public Responses to Supreme Court Decisions

The Limits of Legitimacy: Dissenting Opinions, Media Coverage, and Public Responses to Supreme Court Decisions

Michael A. Zilis 2015
Restricted You do not have access to this book. How to get access.
When the U.S. Supreme Court announces a decision, reporters simplify and dramatize the complex legal issues by highlighting dissenting opinions and thus emphasizing conflict among the justices themselves. This often sensationalistic coverage fosters public controversy over specific rulings despite polls which show that Americans strongly believe in the Court's legitimacy as an institution. In_ The Limits of _Legitimacy, Michael A. Zilis illuminates this link between case law and public opinion. Drawing on a diverse array of sources and methods, he employs case studies of eminent domain decisions, analysis of media reporting, an experiment to test how volunteers respond to media messages, and finally the natural experiment of the controversy over the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare.

Zilis finds that the media tends not to quote from majority opinions. However, the greater the division over a particular ruling among the justices themselves, the greater the likelihood that the media will criticize that ruling, characterize it as "activist," and employ inflammatory rhetoric. Hethen demonstrates that the media's portrayal of a decision, as much as the substance of the decision itself, influences citizens' reactions to and acceptance of it.

This meticulously constructed study and its persuasively argued conclusion advance the understanding of the media, judicial politics, political institutions, and political behavior.

Read Book Buy Book
ISBN(s)
  • 978-0-472-07274-3 (hardcover)
  • 978-0-472-12124-3 (ebook)
  • 978-0-472-05274-5 (paper)
Subject
  • Political Science:American Politics
  • Political Science:Judicial Politics
  • Media Studies:Journalism
Citable Link
  • Table of Contents

  • Stats

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • Dedication
  • Contents
  • Acknowledgments
  • Chapter 1 Introduction
  • Chapter 2 Institutional Legitimacy, Public Reactions, and the Backlash Puzzle
  • Part One: The Court and the Press
    • Chapter 3 The Dissensus Dynamics Model: How the National News Media Cover Supreme Court Decisions
    • Chapter 4 “All Private Property Is Now Vulnerable”: A Case Study of Consensus, Dissent, and Media Coverage
    • Chapter 5 “I Respectfully Dissent”: A Test of Dissensus Dynamics in Newspaper Coverage
    • Chapter 6 Dissent, Debate, and Depictions of Decisions on Cable News
  • Part Two: Public Responses in Complex Media Environments
    • Chapter 7 In the Court of Public Opinion
    • Chapter 8 Cues v. Frames: Elite Competition and Media Effects after the Supreme Court Rules
    • Chapter 9 The Supreme Court on Trial: Public Opinion and the Obamacare Ruling
    • Chapter 10 Conclusion
  • Appendixes
    • Appendix A Coding Standards for Media Coverage Variables
    • Appendix B The Measurement of Decision Support
    • Appendix C Cases in the Newspaper Coverage Sample
    • Appendix D Cases in the Cable News Coverage Sample
    • Appendix E Stimuli from Study 1, Framing a Religious Expression Ruling
    • Appendix F Selected Stimuli from Study 2, Framing Four Legal Controversies
    • Appendix G Stimuli from Embedded Survey Experiment Following the Obamacare Ruling
  • Notes
  • References
  • Index
18 views since November 21, 2018
University of Michigan Press logo

University of Michigan Press

Powered by Fulcrum logo

  • About
  • Blog
  • Feedback
  • Contact
  • Contribute
  • Accessibility
  • Preservation
  • Privacy
  • Terms of Service
  • Log In
© University of Michigan Press 2020
x This site requires cookies to function correctly.