THE PUBLIC AND THE SUPREME-COURT - INDIVIDUAL JUSTICE RESPONSIVENESS TO AMERICAN POLICY MOODS

Theory: Individual Supreme Court justices care about policy, but they must compete with popular institutions for policy control. They also c are about their institution. In order to secure as much as they can of policy goals and protect their institution, they adjust policy decisi ons at the margins in response to mass public opinion. Hypotheses: Ind ividual Supreme Court justice liberalism depends on shifts in mass pub lic opinion through time. Methods: We test hypotheses using pooled tim e series cross-section analysis, with the individual justice-term as t he unit of analysis. Results: Controlling for the changing composition of the Court, attitudinal inertia of justices, and the strength of ju dicial ideologies, we find that public opinion directly affects decisi ons by individual members of the Court. We show that the result holds across various issue areas, is not restricted to only a few justices, and that the justices' responses are relatively quick with a lag of on ly one term.