Patterns and Consequences of Elite Politicization of the American Judiciary

Abstract

This dissertation studies one of the defining features of contemporary American politics: how elites introduce politics to discussions of the judiciary. Recent developments in American politics, including highly contentious Supreme Court nominations and attacks on the Court by high-profile political elites, have generated increasing concern about the potential negative consequences of the politicization of the judiciary. Despite the concerns about this behavior, scholarship provides little evidence as to its prevalence or effects. Throughout the dissertation, I investigate the choices and communications political elites make in relation to the judiciary and the consequences of this behavior for the fundamental relationship between the American people and the courts. I draw upon original observational, survey, and experimental data to examine the politicization of the judiciary through a series of perspectives. In the first paper, I investigate how political elites communicate about Supreme Court nominees and the consequences of these communications for evaluations of nominees and the Court as an institution. Drawing upon survey data and a novel dataset of all press releases issued by Senators from sixteen years of Supreme Court nominations, I reveal the political incentives that drive politicization and the polarizing and delegitimizing effects this behavior has on the American public. In the second paper, coauthored with Jon C. Rogowski, we employ a nationally-representative conjoint experiment to study the effect of elite politicization on evaluations of prospective judicial nominees. We find that political contestation polarizes partisans' attitudes toward prospective nominees. In the third paper, I explore how elites communicate about the obstruction of Supreme Court nominees and how this behavior shapes public evaluations of procedural obstruction. I develop a typology of messaging about obstruction, show that Senators' institutional positions are the primary drivers of their decisions to engage in obstruction messaging, and find that messaging about obstruction polarizes constituent attitudes towards its use. Finally, in the fourth paper I further examine the foundations of public attitudes toward obstruction of judicial nominees. I uncover a clear political dimension to mass evaluations of the use of obstruction, show that certain methods of obstruction are less politically feasible than others, and illustrate the electoral implications of this behavior. Taken together, my research illuminates the incentives elites have to involve the courts in political debates, clarifies the representation relationship between elites and their constituents on matters of the judiciary, and illustrates the challenges to preserving judicial legitimacy in a polarized era.