Citizen Responses to the Supreme Court’s Health Care and Immigration Rulings: Comparing Experimental and Observational Methods

Abstract

Can the Supreme Court, a highly esteemed institution, change Americans’ policy views? And when it issues controversial decisions, does it lose the trust of persons who disagree? Prior studies come to conflicting conclusions, in part because of major methodological limitations. We improve upon prior work by combining the best features of experimental and observational studies. We surveyed a representative sample of Americans shortly before two major Supreme Court decisions, National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, on the Affordable Care Act, and Arizona v. United States, on Arizona’s immigration restrictions, and again shortly after the decisions, embedding an experiment in this second survey. We find that the Supreme Court can change people’s attitudes and lead public opinion, even on issues such as health care and immigration, which have been heavily debated and politicized by the time of the ruling. Independents followed the Court’s lead in both cases, while Democrats and Republicans moved in opposite directions after the highly politicized health care decision. How a decision is conveyed matters greatly. Respondents who were offered clear messages in support of the majority’s reasoning reacted much more positively than did others. The politicized health care decision also generated significant shifts in confidence in the Court. These findings invite us to revisit debates about the role of an unelected Court in a democracy, and to examine whether and how a Court should review cases when it has the potential to influence national elections. These findings also contribute to debates on survey methodology, by highlighting that experiments can yield larger effects than observational studies, not only by exposing broader segments of the population to information, but also by making some considerations more salient.