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The Limits of Legitimacy: Dissenting Opinions, Media Coverage, and Public Responses to Supreme Court Decisions
Michael A. Zilis
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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.
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Cover
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Title
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Copyright
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Dedication
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Contents
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Acknowledgments
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Chapter 1 Introduction
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Chapter 2 Institutional Legitimacy, Public Reactions, and the Backlash Puzzle
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Part One: The Court and the Press
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Chapter 3 The Dissensus Dynamics Model: How the National News Media Cover Supreme Court Decisions
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Chapter 4 “All Private Property Is Now Vulnerable”: A Case Study of Consensus, Dissent, and Media Coverage
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Chapter 5 “I Respectfully Dissent”: A Test of Dissensus Dynamics in Newspaper Coverage
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Chapter 6 Dissent, Debate, and Depictions of Decisions on Cable News
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Part Two: Public Responses in Complex Media Environments
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Chapter 7 In the Court of Public Opinion
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Chapter 8 Cues v. Frames: Elite Competition and Media Effects after the Supreme Court Rules
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Chapter 9 The Supreme Court on Trial: Public Opinion and the Obamacare Ruling
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Chapter 10 Conclusion
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Appendixes
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Appendix A Coding Standards for Media Coverage Variables
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Appendix B The Measurement of Decision Support
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Appendix C Cases in the Newspaper Coverage Sample
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Appendix D Cases in the Cable News Coverage Sample
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Appendix E Stimuli from Study 1, Framing a Religious Expression Ruling
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Appendix F Selected Stimuli from Study 2, Framing Four Legal Controversies
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Appendix G Stimuli from Embedded Survey Experiment Following the Obamacare Ruling
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Notes
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References
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Index
Citable Link
Published: 2015
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
- 978-0-472-12124-3 (ebook)
- 978-0-472-05274-5 (paper)
- 978-0-472-07274-3 (hardcover)