The Supreme Court in the 1960s

In my last post, I discussed predictions that the Supreme Court would lose legitimacy because of public disapproval of the decision overturning Roe v. Wade.  I noted that ratings of the Supreme Court were favorable in 1963 and 1967, but then fell sharply from June 1967 to July 1968.  What might have caused this change?  I searched for contemporary survey questions about Supreme Court decisions.  In November 1966, the Harris Poll asked a series of questions--I give the percent approving, among those who had an opinion*:

School desegregation                                     64%

Equal numbers in Congressional districts:    76%

No right to refuse service because of race:    64%

Can't stop Communists from foreign travel:  49%

Right to attorney in police questioning:         35%

school prayer                                                  30%

In all of these cases, the court had ruled in what was considered a liberal direction.  Some of the rulings were popular with the public and others were unpopular.  

There were no questions about Supreme Court rulings between June 1967 and 1968.  Thurgood Marshall had been nominated just a few days before the 1967 survey, and the confirmation hearings took place in the following months.  There were no national survey questions about views of the Marshall nomination, but one from the Minnesota Poll found overwhelming approval in that state.  My guess is that it didn't make much difference--the people who disapproved of him who already had a negative view of the court because of civil rights ruling.  

So maybe the change wasn't because of what the Supreme Court did over that period, but because of other things in the world.  1967 was the "long hot summer" of urban riots--most of them, including the ones in Detroit and Newark, took place after the 1967 survey.  There were more riots after the assassination of Martin Luther King in April 1968.  In July 1968, another Harris Poll asked people if they agreed or disagreed with several statements about the Supreme Court.  For "The present court has been good in the desegregation and one man-one vote decisions,"  41% agreed, 25% disagreed, and 34% weren't sure.  For "The present court made it harder to convict criminals and was wrong to ban prayers from schoolrooms," 78% agreed, 11% disagreed, and 11% weren't sure.  So the events of 1967-68 may have increased the salience of issues about crime, on which most people disapproved of the court decisions.  In June 1968, Gallup asked about whether people would like new members of the Supreme Court to have liberal or conservative views:  51% said conservative and 30% said liberal, although the number of self-described liberals and conservatives was about equal at that time.  As I mentioned last time, views of the Supreme Court eventually recovered--that was partly because the Court became more conservative, and partly because the public came to accept some decisions that had initially been unpopular (most aspects of the Miranda ruling).

*I would have liked to include don't knows, but they weren't given in the source.  

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

PS:  here's a short piece I wrote with Andrew Gelman that was published earlier this week: https://www.smerconish.com/exclusive-content/how-abortion-became-one-of-the-most-polarizing-issues-in-america