Ideological divergence and public support for the supreme court

We examine the degree to which aggregate-level support for the Supreme Court is a function of its divergence from the ideological mood of the country. We first overcome the problem of irregular and infrequent measurement of attitudes toward the Supreme Court by employing an approach developed by Stimson (1991) which allows us to pool seventeen similar survey items administered a total of ninety-three times to produce a single, semi-annual time series of support for the Supreme Court, extending from 1973 through 1993. We then consider the effect of the Court's ideological position on the level of support it enjoys. In contrast to previous research, we take into account that both the Court's and the public's ideological preferences vary over time. Our analysis indicates that the public's appraisal of the Supreme Court responds not to the Court's ideological position per se, but rather to the extent to which the Court's position diverges from the ideological preferences of the citizenry; when the Court deviates from the public mood, its support erodes.