While thinking about the draft Supreme Court decision on abortion, I looked at the court opinion in Casey v. Planned Parenthood (1992).* I found that, in addition to legal reasoning, it contained some sociology (or political science): "Where, in the performance of its judicial duties, the Court decides a case in such a way as to resolve the sort of intensely divisive controversy reflected in Roe and those rare, comparable cases, its decision has a dimension that the resolution of the normal case does not carry. It is the dimension present whenever the Court’s interpretation of the Constitution calls the contending sides of a national controversy to end their national division by accepting a common mandate rooted in the Constitution."
" The Court is not asked to do this very often, having thus addressed the Nation only twice in our lifetime, in the decisions of Brown and Roe." Of course, in 1992 there was still division over many issues involving race (as there is today), but the national division over segregation was over: virtually everyone agreed that segregation was wrong. Did the Supreme Court decision contribute to this change? The Gallup Poll asked the following question a number of times: "The US Supreme Court has ruled that racial segregation in the public schools is illegal. That means that all children, no matter what their race, must be allowed to go to the same schools. Do you approve or disapprove of this decision?" The figure shows the ratio of approve:disapprove
There was some shift towards approval: in May 1954 (about a week after the decision) 55% said they approved and 40% said they disapproved and in May 1961 63% approved and 32% disapproved. The last figure is from a question asked by Harris in 1966: "In 1954, the U.S. supreme court ruled that it was illegal to require Negro children to go to all Negro or segregated schools. Do you personally think that decision of the U.S. Supreme Court was right or wrong?" 64% of those who had an opinion said it was right and 36% said it was wrong.** The difference between the questions makes comparison difficult, but at least you can say there was still substantial division over the issue in 1966, twelve years after the decision. Finally, the Gallup question was repeated (with a small change in the introductory wording) in a survey for the fortieth anniversary of the decision in 1994: 88% approved and 11% disapproved.
Ideally, there would have been questions before the decision about how people hoped the court would rule. I couldn't find any, but there was a question in 1950 that asked which statement you agreed with: "Children
of all races, and colors, should be allowed to go to the same schools
together everywhere in the country. Children of all races and color,
should be allowed to go to the same public schools together everywhere
except in the South, where white and Negro children should go to
separate schools. White children and Negro children should be required
to go to separate schools everywhere in the country." 42% said same schools, 17% same except in the South, and 36% said separate schools. Judging from those answers, 42% favored the result of the court decision and 53% opposed it. That suggests that the Supreme Court decision made some difference for public opinion, but that most of the change was part of the gradual long-term liberal movement in racial attitudes.
*I'm quoting from opinion by O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter, which was joined by Stevens and Blackmun for the passage I quoted. Rhenquist, White, Scalia and Thomas dissented,
**Those figures were taken from a published source which didn't show the percentage of "don't knows"; that's why I show the ratio of agree to disagree rather than the percent agreeing.
[Data from the Roper Opinion for Public Opinion Research]
No comments:
Post a Comment