Knowing the Supreme Court? A Reconsideration of Public Ignorance of the High Court

Abstract

Conventional wisdom holds that the American people are woefully ignorant about law and courts. In light of this putative ignorance, scholars and other commentators have questioned whether the public should play a role in the judicial process—for example, whether public preferences should matter for U.S. Supreme Court confirmation processes. Unfortunately, however, much of what we know—or think we know— about public knowledge of the Supreme Court is based upon flawed measures and procedures. So, for instance, the American National Election Study, a prominent source of the conclusion that people know little if anything about the U.S. Supreme Court, codes as incorrect the reply that William Rehnquist is (was) a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court; respondents, to be judged knowledgeable, must identify Rehnquist as the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (which, of course, technically, he was not). More generally, the use of open-ended recall questions leads to a serious and substantial underestimation of t...