I Respectfully Dissent: Linking Judicial Voting Behavior, Media Coverage, and Public Responses in the Study of U.S. Supreme Court Decisions.

Abstract

This dissertation is a study of what happens after the Supreme Court rules. It begins by identifying a critical feature absent from existing studies of judicial policy legitimation: the information conveyed by the press to the public. The dissertation combines disparate research, theory, and the use of multiple methods to answer important questions about Supreme Court influence.

I develop Dissensus Dynamics Theory to show that voting outcomes on the Supreme Court play the most important role in shaping how the press portrays legal controversies. The central place of voting outcomes comes from their value to journalists who must characterize judicial decisions while subject to considerable constraints. In cases where dissent and division on the bench is high, news organizations portray rulings in negative terms, drawing on frames raised by dissenting justices and by critics of the Court.

To explore Dissensus Dynamics Theory more rigorously, I employ a diverse range of tests. A case study of property rights coverage demonstrates the direct and indirect impacts of dissenting votes on coverage. I show that dissent encourages the press to seek out critics of a ruling, but also to highlight evocative language from dissenting opinions. As such, dissent leads to media portrayals of property rights law that emphasize multiple, competing perspectives in place of frames more deferential to the Court.

I examine Dissensus Dynamics Theory further by coupling content analysis data with statistical tests. I find evidence that judicial dissensus increases the prevalence of negative frames in newspaper and cable news accounts of decisions. Dissensus also increases the prevalence of aggressive rhetoric in cable news coverage. And ideological diversity in majority coalitions affects coverage under certain conditions. These results hold even when taking into account the most powerful alternative explanations to Dissensus Dynamics Theory.

In the final chapters, I demonstrate why media coverage matters. Experimental evidence shows that negative frames limit support for Supreme Court rulings, even as subjects continue to view the institution favorably. These findings bridge what have been, until now, disparate lines of inquiry involving law and politics, political communication, and public opinion.