Replication data for: Partisans In Robes: Party Cues and Public Acceptance of Supreme Court Decisions

The public perceives the Supreme Court to be a legal institution, less partisan than its counterparts. This perception enables the Court’s legitimacy conferring function, which serves to increase public acceptance of its decisions. Yet, the public acknowledges a political aspect to the Court as well. To evaluate how the public responds to these different images of the Court, we investigate whether and how depictions of specifically partisan (e.g., Republican) Supreme Court rulings shape public acceptance of these decisions while varying institutional, legal, and issue characteristics. Using survey experiments based on four recent Supreme Court decisions, we find that party cues and partisanship, more so than institutional source cues, affect public acceptance. Attributing a decision to the Court does little to increase baseline acceptance of the decision or attenuate partisan cue effects. The Court’s uniqueness, at least in terms of its ability to generate acceptance of its decisions, is perhaps overstated.