Curbing the Court

Brandon L. Bartels is Associate Professor of Political Science at George Washington University and co-editor of Making Law and Courts Research Relevant, published by Routledge. His research has appeared in journals such as the American Political Science Review and American Journal of Political Science. Christopher D. Johnston is Associate Professor of Political Science at Duke University. He is co-author of The Ambivalent Partisan, published by Oxford University Press, and Open Versus Closed: Personality, Identity, and the Politics of Redistribution, published by Cambridge University Press, both of which won the David O. Sears award.

• 1. The guardians of judicial independence; 2. Theories of public support for court-curbing; 3. A deep dive into Supreme Court evaluation and support; 4. General policy disagreement and broadly targeted court-curbing; 5. Specific policy disagreement and support for court-curbing; 6. Partisan polarization and support for court-curbing; 7. Procedural perceptions and motivated reasoning; 8. Reconsidering the public foundations of judicial independence.

'As Bartels and Johnston show in this careful analysis, partisan politics and policy preferences deeply influence how people view - and to what extent they support - the Supreme Court. In what is poised to be a seminal piece of scholarship, Bartels and Johnston deliver a timely and cautionary message: not even a nonpartisan institution like the Supreme Court is immune to the partisan mud-slinging of American politics.' Maya Sen, Harvard University