Other Legal Studies Commons^™

Public Opinion Of And Faith In The U.S. Supreme Court, Allee Gay

Honors Theses

The US Supreme Court has been historically trusted as an impartial arbiter of the Constitution. However, in 2022 the level of public trust in the Supreme Court dropped to a historic low, and faith in the institution has not recovered in the following years. Previous research demonstrated that Supreme Court decisions can influence public opinion and suggested that the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Clinic can be blamed for this decline. Further research proved that the President’s role in appointing justices can have an effect on the perception of the Court. This study examines both the reactions to controversial cases …

Court Legitimacy & The Shadow Docket, Colton Tilley

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

News Treatment Of The Supreme Court: Language Selection, Ideological Directions, And Public Support, Alexander Denison

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

In an increasingly diverse media landscape, how much of the ideological trends seen in current news reporting affect coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court? This work examines two different aspects of the Court's activities, their decisions and the confirmation hearings of Court nominees, analyzing what factors, if any, lead to differences in coverage language. Finally, through the use of a survey experiment, I analyze whether these differences in language, in combination with positive symbolic imagery, affect attitudes toward the institution. This work provides a novel consideration of whether the Court is subject to the same ideological slant found in coverage …

Self-Determination In American Discourse: The Supreme Court’S Historical Indoctrination Of Free Speech And Expression, Jarred Williams

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Within the American criminal legal system, it is a well-established practice to presume the innocence of those charged with criminal offenses unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Such a judicial framework-like approach, called a legal maxim, is utilized in order to ensure that the law is applied and interpreted in ways that legislative bodies originally intended.

The central aim of this piece in relation to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution is to investigate whether the Supreme Court of the United States has utilized a specific legal maxim within cases that dispute government speech or expression regulation. …

Equality Arguments For Abortion Rights, Neil S. Siegel, Reva B. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

Roe v. Wade grounds constitutional protections for women’s decision wheth­er to end a pregnancy in the Due Process Clauses. But in the four decades since Roe, the U.S. Supreme Court has come to recognize the abortion right as an equality right as well as a liberty right. In this Essay, we describe some distinctive features of equality arguments for abortion rights. We then show how, over time, the Court and individual Justices have begun to employ equal­ity arguments in analyzing the constitutionality of abortion restrictions. These arguments first appear inside of substantive due process case law, and then as claims …