Does increased use of the shadow docket influence public opinion of the Supreme Court? In recent years, the shadow docket of the Supreme Court has been used with increased frequency to make important decisions. The little research done previously on this docket has led to speculation that the shadow docket creates potential problems with perceptions of legitimacy for the Court. I theorize that procedures matter in changing public opinion of an institution when the procedures are nontransparent, stray from expected norms, and are thus perceived as politically unfair. I administered a survey experiment and find evidence to suggest that use of the shadow docket procedure does lead to less support for decisions as well as an increased support for measures of broad court curbing. The results have important implications for approval of the Court as well as the role of the Court in a transparent democracy.
AnnasG. J. (2007). The Supreme Court and abortion rights. New England Journal of Medicine, 356, 2201.
2.
ArmalyM. T. (2021). Loyalty over fairness, acceptance of unfair Supreme court procedures. Political Research Quarterly, 74(4), 927-940.
3.
ArmalyM. T.LaneE. A. (2022). Politicized battles: How vacancies and partisanship influence support for the Supreme court. American Politics Research.
4.
AustinP. C.HuxJ. E. (2002). A brief note on overlapping confidence intervals. Journal of Vascular Surgery, 36(1), 194-195.
5.
BadasA.JustusB.LiS. (2022). Assessing the influence of Supreme court’s shadow docket in the judicial hierarchy. Justice System Journal, 1-14.
6.
BakkerB. N.YphtachL.MalkaA. (2021). Reconsidering the link between self-reported personality traits and political preferences. American Political Science Review, 115(4), 1482-1498.
7.
BartelsB. L.JohnstonC. D. (2020). Curbing the court, why the public constrains judicial independence. Cambridge University Press.
8.
BaudeW. (2015). Foreword, the Supreme court’s shadow docket. NYUJL and Liberty, 9(1).
9.
BerinskyA. J.HuberG. A.LenzG. S. (2012). Evaluating online labor markets for experimental research, amazon. Com’s mechanical Turk. Political Analysis, 20(3), 351-368.
10.
BerinskyA. J.MargolisM. F.SancesM. W. (2014). Separating the shirkers from the workers? Making sure respondents pay attention on self-administered surveys. American Journal of Political Science, 58(3), 739-753.
11.
BøggildT.AarøeL.PetersenM. B. (2021). Citizens as complicit, distrust in politicians and biased social dissemination of political information. American Political Science Review, 115(1), 269-285.
12.
BramanE. (2016). Exploring citizen assessments of unilateral executive authority. Law and Society Review, 50(1), 189-223.
BryanA. C. (2020). Public opinion and setting the agenda on the US Supreme court. American Politics Research, 48(3), 377-390.
15.
BryanA. C.KromphardtC. D. (2016). Public opinion, public support, and counter-attitudinal voting on the US Supreme court. Justice System Journal, 37(4), 298-317.
16.
ByrnR. M. (1972). An American tragedy: The Supreme court on abortion. Fordham L Rev, 41, 807.
17.
CaldeiraG. AGibsonJ. L. (1992). The etiology of public support for the supreme court. American Journal of Political Science, 635–664.
18.
CarlsonM.JakliL.LinosK. (2018). Rumors and refugees, how government-created information vacuums undermine effective crisis management. International Studies Quarterly, 62(3), 671-685.
19.
ClarkT. S. (2009). The separation of powers, court curbing, and judicial legitimacy. American Journal of Political Science, 53(4), 971-989.
20.
CliffN. (1988). The eigenvalues-greater-than-one rule and the reliability of components. Psychological Bulletin, 103(2), 276.
21.
CliffordS.JewellR. M.WaggonerP. D. (2015). Are samples drawn from mechanical Turk valid for research on political ideology?Research and Politics, 2(4).
22.
CohenD. S. (2022). The Supreme court’s ‘shadow docket’ is even shadier than it sounds. Rolling stone.
23.
CohenD. S.DonleyG.RebouchéR. (2023). The new abortion battleground. Colum L Rev, 123, 1.
24.
CollinsT. A.CooperC. A. (2016) (In press). The case salience index, public opinion, and decision making on the US supreme court. Justice System Journal, 37(3), 232–245.
25.
DohertyD.WolakJ. (2012). When do the ends justify the means? Evaluating procedural fairness. Political Behavior, 34(2), 301-323.
26.
EllisT. S.III (2008). Sealing, judicial transparency and judicial independence. Vill L Rev, 53, 939.
27.
EpsteinL.KnightJ. (1997). The choices justices make. Sage.
28.
ErksineE. (2021). Senators spar over shadow docket in wake of court’s order allowing Texas abortion law to take effect. Scotusblog.
29.
FellemanF.WrightJ. C. (1964). The powers of the Supreme court justice acting in an individual capacity. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 112(7), 981-1024.
30.
GibsonJ. L. (1989). Understandings of justice, institutional legitimacy, procedural justice, and political tolerance (pp. 469-496). Law and Society Review.
31.
GibsonJ. L.CaldeiraG. A. (2009). Knowing the Supreme court? A reconsideration of public ignorance of the high court. The Journal of Politics, 71(2), 429-441.
32.
GibsonJ. L.NelsonM. J. (2016). Change in institutional support for the US Supreme court: Is the court’s legitimacy imperiled by the decisions it makes?Public Opinion Quarterly, 80(3), 622-641.
33.
HauserD. J.SchwarzN. (2016). Attentive turkers, MTurk participants perform better on online attention checks than do subject pool participants. Behavior Research Methods, 48(1), 400-407.
34.
HelmkeG.LevitskyS. (2012). Informal institutions and comparative politics: A research agenda. International handbook on informal governance.
35.
HibbingJ. R.Theiss-MorseE. (1996). Civics is not enough, teaching barbarics in K-12. PS, Political Science and Politics, 29(1), 57-62.
36.
HibbingJ. R.Theiss-MorseE. (Eds), (2001). What is it about government that Americans dislike?Cambridge University Press.
37.
HittM. P.SaundersK. L.ScottK. M. (2019). Justice speaks, but who’s listening? Mass public awareness of US Supreme court cases. Journal of Law and Courts, 7(1), 29-52.
38.
HoekstraV. J. (2000). The Supreme court and local public opinion. American Political Science Review, 94(1), 89-100.
39.
HurleyL.AndrewC.AllenJ. (2021). The ‘shadow docket,’ how the U.S. Supreme court quietly dispatches key rulings. Reuters March 23.
40.
HurwitzJ.PeffleyM. (1987). The means and ends of foreign policy as determinants of presidential support. American Journal of Political Science, 236-258.
41.
JohnsonB.StrotherL. (2021). TRENDS, the Supreme court’s (surprising?) indifference to public opinion. Political Research Quarterly, 74(1), 18-34.
42.
KaiserH. F. (1960). The application of electronic computers to factor analysis. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 20(1), 141-151.
43.
LeventhalG. S.GergenI. J.GreenbergM. S.WillisR. H. (1980). What should be done with equity theory?Social exchange: Advances in theory and research. Plenum.
44.
LindE. A.TylerT. R. (1988). The social psychology of procedural justice. Springer Science and Business Media.
45.
MarkA.ZilisM. A. (2019). The conditional effectiveness of legislative threats, how court curbing alters the behavior of (some) Supreme court justices. Political Research Quarterly, 72(3), 570-583.
46.
MasoodA. S.SongerD. R. (2013). Reevaluating the implications of decision-making models, the role of summary decisions in US Supreme court analysis. Journal of Law and Courts, 1(2), 363-389.
47.
McDonaldB. P. (2021). This is the shadiest part of the Supreme court. NYTimes. Nov, 3.
48.
MincbergE. (2019). Kavanaugh shows his stripes on Supreme court’s ‘shadow docket’. The Hill.
49.
MondakJ. J. (1990). Perceived legitimacy of supreme court decisions: Three functions of source credibility. Political Behavior, 12, 363–384.
50.
MondakJ. J. (1993). Public opinion and heuristic processing of source cues. Political Behavior, 15, 167–192.
51.
MummoloJ.PetersonE. (2019). Demand effects in survey experiments, an empirical assessment. American Political Science Review, 113(2), 517-529.
52.
MurphyE. E. (2021). Substantive changes in the shadow docket of the US supreme court. Law Journal, (75), 115–136.
53.
PaasL. J.DolnicarS.KarlssonL. (2018). Instructional manipulation checks, A longitudinal analysis with implications for MTurk. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 35(2), 258-269.
54.
PeffleyM.HurwitzJ. (2010). Justice in America: The separate realities of Blacks and Whites. Cambridge University Press.
55.
PeytonK. (2020). Does trust in government increase support for redistribution? Evidence from randomized survey experiments. American Political Science Review, 114(2), 596-602.
ReevesA.RogowskiJ. C. (2016). Unilateral powers, public opinion, and the presidency. The Journal of Politics, 78(1), 137-151.
58.
RomoserJ. (2020). Symposium, shining a light on the shadow docket. ScotusBlog.
59.
ScaliL. J. (1984). Prediction-making in the Supreme court, the granting of stays by individual justices. UCLA L Rev, 32, 1020.
60.
SchaferJ. A. (2013). The role of trust and transparency in the pursuit of procedural and organizational justice. Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism, 8(2), 131-143.
61.
SheppardB. H.LewickiR. J. (1987). Toward general principles of managerial fairness. Social Justice Research, 1, 161-176.
62.
SnodgrassE. (2023). The Supreme court makes almost all of its decisions on the 'shadow docket.’ In: An author argues it should worry Americans more than luxury trips. Business Insider.
63.
SommerU.LiQ.ParentJ. (2020). Norms and political payoffs in Supreme court recusals. Political Behavior, 1-17.
64.
SternR. L.GressmanE.ShapiroS. M.GellerK. S. (1985). Supreme court practice. Bureau of National Affairs.
65.
ThomasK. A.CliffordS. (2017). Validity and mechanical Turk, an assessment of exclusion methods and interactive experiments. Computers in Human Behavior, 77, 184-197.
66.
TylerT. R. (1988). What is procedural justice criteria used by citizens to assess the fairness of legal procedures. Law and Society Review, 22, 103-136.
67.
TylerT. R. (2006). Psychological perspectives on legitimacy and legitimation. Annual Review of Psychology, 57, 375-400.
68.
TylerT. R.MitchellG. (1993). Legitimacy and the empowerment of discretionary legal authority: The United States Supreme court and abortion rights. Duke LJ, 43, 703.
69.
TylerT. R.RasinskiK. A. (1991). Procedural justice, institutional legitimacy, and the acceptance of unpopular US Supreme court decisions, A reply to Gibson (pp. 621-630). Law and Society Review.
70.
TylerT. R.RasinskiK. A.McGrawK. M. (1985). The influence of perceived injustice on the endorsement of political leaders. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 15(9), 700-725.
71.
VladeckS. (2019). The solicitor general and the shadow docket. Harv L Rev, 133, 123.
72.
VladeckS. (2022). Roberts has lost control of the Supreme court. NYTimes.
73.
VladeckS. (2023). The shadow docket: How the Supreme court uses stealth rulings to amass power and undermine the republic. Basic Books.
74.
WalshM. (2021). The Supreme court’s ‘shadow docket’ is drawing increasing scrutiny. ABAJournal.com.
75.
ZilisM. (2015). The limits of legitimacy: Dissenting opinions, media coverage, and public responses to Supreme Court decisions. University of Michigan Press.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
