Save this Honorable Court: Shaping Public Perceptions of the Supreme Court Off the Bench

Abstract

Scholars believe that justices on the U.S. Supreme Court strategically respond to—but rarely shape—public opinion. This article provides a new perspective on judicial behavior. Looking “off the bench,” I find evidence that justices actively shape perceptions of the Court through their public speeches. In particular, I employed a randomized field experiment and a randomized survey experiment to analyze the causal effects of attending a speech and reading about it in the news. For the field experiment, I assigned law students with reservations to a public speech by Justice Sotomayor to take a survey just before or just after the event. For the separate survey experiment, I assigned individuals in a treatment group to read news coverage of the speech before responding to survey questions. I find that, among attendees, justices improve their own favorability and change beliefs about the importance of law in judicial decision making. Among those who read of the speech, justices also change perceptions of the politicization of the Court and strengthen institutional loyalty. These findings have important implications for our understanding of judicial behavior and public perceptions of the Court.