Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s confirmation reawakened concerns about the representativeness of the Supreme Court. As Brendan Nyhan pointed out here at TMC, Kavanaugh was appointed by a president who lost the popular vote and confirmed by a Senate majority that represents less than half of the U.S. population. Scholars have raised concerns that the court will now be far more conservative than the country as a whole.
If that proves true, it won’t represent anything new. In our research, we argue that any overall correspondence between public opinion and Supreme Court rulings depends on a single historical period: the “Warren Court,” when Earl Warren served as chief justice. Once you set aside that period, court decisions do not follow the general tenor of public opinion. CONT.
Ben Johnson (Penn State) & Logan Strother (Purdue), Monkey Cage