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Public Opinion In Supreme Court Confirmations By Jonathan Kastellec

637 Words3 Pages

In the piece titled” Public Opinion in Supreme Court Confirmations,” Jonathan Kastellec presents the role of the public’s opinion in the Supreme courts final decision on who will serve on the bench. Kastellec presents the idea of electoral incentives by senators tying the Supreme Court nominations directly back to the public. Nevertheless, public opinion influences the votes of the individuals who ultimately cast the ballot. Therefore, decisions on who sits on the court aren’t only in the hands of the president or the senate to decide. In the grand scheme of events, there is a connection between the Supreme Court and the American public. Kastellec mainly focuses on three elements that are necessary in order to create this connection between the American public and The Supreme Court. The elements are listed as : knowledge, salience and attention. According to his finding, (1) citizens tend to know about court decisions that affect them or the issues they care about, (2) Americans know more about the court and pay ore attention to senators and how they vote according to their views, and (3) the senators do monitor and care about what public think because of their desire for reelection. Therefore, history proves that in order for senators to establish credibility in the …show more content…

In the first stage, the survey and responses are used to estimate the opinions of different type of people. While in the second stage, the average are weighted and a series of statistics are generated. In the end, there was a high level of public support for senators that depict the views of the people in their constituents. Public opinion has a huge influence on the Supreme Court confirmation politics . Nevertheless, as the support of the nominees increase, senators are more likely to support and vote for

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