There is wide scholarly agreement that the frequent replacement of justices has kept the Supreme Court generally attuned to public opinion. Recent research indicates that, in addition to this indirect effect, Supreme Court justices respond directly to changes in public opinion. We explore the two causal pathways suggested to link public opinion directly to the behavior of justices and the implications of the nature and strength of these linkages for current debates concerning Supreme Court tenure. The recent increase in the stability of Court membership has raised questions about the continued efficacy of the replacement mechanism and renewed debates over mechanisms to limit judicial tenure. Our analysis provides little evidence that justices respond strategically to public opinion but provides partial support for the idea that justices' preferences shift in response to the same social forces that shape the opinions of the general public. Our analysis offers preliminary evidence that—even in the absence o...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1017/S0022381608080316

The Supreme Court in American Democracy: Unraveling the Linkages between Public Opinion and Judicial Decision Making

A popular argument that is commonly put forth as an explanation linking digital technologies to political polarization is related to their ability to foster the emergence of echo chambers where extremist ideas are amplified. Sunstein (2018), a leading proponent of this view, argues that the main characteristic of social networking sites is that they allow politically like-minded individuals to find one another. In this environment, citizens are only exposed to information that reinforces their political views and remain isolated from other individuals with opposing views, in part due to the filtering effects of ranking algorithms that generate filter bubbles (Pariser, 2011) and create incentives for publishers to share clickbait and hyperpartisan content (Benkler et al, 2018). The outcome of this process is a society that is increasingly segregated along partisan lines, and where compromise becomes unlikely due to rising mistrust on public officials, media outlets, and ordinary citizens on the other side of the ideological spectrum.

Social Media, Echo Chambers, and Political Polarization

This wide-ranging comparative account of the legal regimes for controlling administrative power in England, the USA and Australia argues that differences and similarities between control regimes may be partly explained by the constitutional structures of the systems of government in which they are embedded. It applies social-scientific and historical methods to the comparative study of law and legal systems in a novel and innovative way, and combines accounts of long-term and large-scale patterns of power distribution with detailed analysis of features of administrative law and the administrative justice systems of three jurisdictions. It also proposes a new method of analysing systems of government based on two different models of the distribution of public power (diffusion and concentration), a model which proves more illuminating than traditional separation-of-powers analysis.

Controlling Administrative Power: An Historical Comparison

Debates about media concentration and its adequate handling are not coming to an end. This paper stresses the dual character of media goods, the underlying ideological ideals, and the attendant institutional setting as source of value conflict in communications policy making. It discusses this value conflict and gives examples of where it surfaces and how it is confronted. It is particularly evident in cases of media concentration. Newly introduced communications laws and policies within Europe and the USA aim to reduce (ownership) regulation, promote competition and cope with the challenges posed by convergence. This quest is coupled in part with protections of media pluralism through custom-developed indices for measuring concentration in media markets and tests for assessing media plurality in merger cases. The paper describes and discusses such new methods and instruments as novel but imperfect attempts by policy makers to respond to the various challenges in communications such as value conflict, convergence, the need for empirical proof and claims for non-economic ways of assessing media diversity. It concludes by stressing the need to re-emphasize normative claims as essential guiding elements of communications policy making.

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Measuring media concentration and diversity: new approaches and instruments in Europe and the US:

Misinformation, Disinformation, and Online Propaganda

The legendary Washington Bureau Chief and columnist of The New York Times, James Reston, with a push from Felix Frankfurter, decided that the paper of record would have its own correspondent specializing in the Supreme Court1 With his eye for excellent young talent,2 Reston chose Anthony Lewis, already a Pulitzer-Prize winner before his thirtieth birthday,3 and sent him to Harvard for the 1956–57 academic year as a Nieman Fellow to study law

Writing the First Draft of History: Anthony Lewis as Supreme Court Correspondent

Two Great Leaders

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Justice Douglas After Fifty Years: The First Amendment, Mccarthyism and Rights.

With the rarest of exceptions, when Supreme Court Justices leave the Court, they are soon all but forgotten.1 Constitutional law is unrelentingly presentist, so closely intertwined with politics and society that sitting (or recently departed) Justices necessarily speak to the issues more directly than those from another era. If that were not enough, being forgotten is virtually inevitable for those whose careers are short. One of those men was Wiley Rutledge who served from February 1943 until his death at age 55 from a cerebral hemorrhage, six and a half years later. Until John M. Ferren's recently published and marvelously researched Salt of the Earth, Conscience of the Court,2 Rutledge even lacked a true biography.3 That has been a shame, because the two dominant themes of Ferren's book show that Rutledge is worth knowing: He was a good man and a good judge. Indeed, on what probably was the most fractious Court in American history,4 Rutledge was the sole member both personally liked and intellectually respected by every other member.5

L. A. Powe

Papers

Writing the First Draft of History: Anthony Lewis as Supreme Court Correspondent

Two Great Leaders

Justice Douglas After Fifty Years: The First Amendment, Mccarthyism and Rights.

Re)introducing Wiley Rutledge