RAPID: Supreme Court Support and Democratic Values

RAPID：最高法院的支持和民主价值观

• 批准号: 2226543
• 负责人: Matthew Hitt
• 金额: $ 9.27万
• 依托单位: Colorado State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-05-01 至 2023-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2226543&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: RAPID; Supreme; Court; Support; Democratic

The Supreme Court of the United States is one of the most powerful institutions within the American political system – exercising authority over life, liberty, and property. While granted these powers by law and political tradition, the Court’s legitimacy in making these weighty decisions rests, in no small part, on the public accepting that the Court is “above” politics. In other words, despite creating “winners” and “losers” when issuing decisions, ordinary people seem to believe two things: (1) the Court’s members were chosen via fair, democratic processes, and (2) differences in opinion are due to conflicting Constitutional interpretations rather than the naked partisan preferences of Justices. These assumptions, however, have been sorely tested in recent years. From brutal, polarized confirmation hearings to questions about candidates’ fitness to serve, and controversial, highly visible decisions, some citizens may not see the Court as the same backstop for democratic values that it was in the mid-20th Century. These developments raise thorny questions about the sources of public support for the Supreme Court more generally. We investigate whether citizens’ democratic beliefs are connected to their views about the Court’s legitimacy, and, in turn, whether those attitudes are affected by the Court’s decisions.To explore the relationship between public views about democracy and their support for the Court, this research will deploy a four-wave panel survey that will allow researchers to (1) test whether democratic values correspond to diffuse support via a rigorous panel design and, (2) analyze whether highly salient decisions affect the Court’s legitimacy, generally, and whether such decisions affect the relationship between democratic values and Court support, specifically. By collecting a combination of original survey, panel, and experimental data, this research supplies a rare opportunity to obtain contemporaneous public reactions to a series of high-profile decisions that the Court will most likely issue during the summer of 2022, which bookends a period of sincere political and democratic upheaval. Despite political scientists’ concern about democratic backsliding, insufficient attention has been paid to the role of the judiciary in deepening public cynicism about democracy. This research not only represents a significant step forward in understanding basic theories of why citizens respect the Supreme Court’s legitimacy, but it offers a chance to analyze how a potentially counter-majoritarian political institution may be contributing to this country’s ongoing crisis of democracy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

美国最高法院是美国政治体系中最强大的机构之一，对生命、自由和财产行使权力，虽然法律和政治传统赋予最高法院这些权力，但法院做出这些重大决定的合法性在于：换句话说，尽管在做出裁决时创造了“赢家”和“输家”，但普通民众似乎相信两件事：（1）法院的成员是。通过公平、民主的方式选出（2）意见分歧是由于对宪法的解释相互冲突，而不是大法官赤裸裸的党派偏好。然而，这些假设近年来已经受到残酷、两极分化的确认听证会和候选人是否适合的问题的严峻考验。由于最高法院做出了一些有争议的、引人注目的决定，一些公民可能不再像 20 世纪中叶那样将最高法院视为民主价值观的后盾。这些事态发展引发了关于公众对最高法院的支持来源的棘手问题。更一般地说。我们调查公民的民主信仰是否与他们对法院合法性的看法有关，反过来，这些态度是否受到法院判决的影响。为了探讨公众对民主的看法与他们对法院的支持之间的关系，本研究将部署一项四轮小组调查，使研究人员能够（1）通过严格的小组设计测试民主价值观是否与分散支持相对应，（2）分析高度显着的判决是否会影响法院的总体合法性，以及此类判决是否会影响法院的合法性具体来说，影响民主价值观和法院支持之间的关系。这项研究结合了原始调查、小组和实验数据，提供了一个难得的机会来了解公众对法院很可能在 2022 年夏季发布的一系列备受瞩目的判决的同期反应，该判决结束了一段时期尽管政治学家对民主倒退表示担忧，但对司法部门在加深公众对民主的愤世嫉俗方面的作用却没有给予足够的重视。这项研究不仅代表了理解方面的重大进步。解释为什么公民尊重最高法院合法性的基本理论，但它提供了一个机会来分析潜在的反多数政治机构如何可能导致该国持续的民主危机。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并被认为值得支持通过使用基金会的智力优点和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估。