| Popis: |
What makes institutions more, or less, legitimate in the eyes of citizens they serve? A growing literature investigates how characteristics of policymakers themselves affect how citizens perceive political institutions. Yet we know very little about what shapes views of the judiciary. This is a significant oversight. Judges do not have access to two key ‘legitimacy levers’ that elected leaders do: the voice of the people, and the will of the people. Moreover, the judiciary has no direct enforcement power; it must rely on the will of legislators and citizens to implement decisions even if the latter are unpopular and do not reflect the will of the majority. Arguably, courts cannot exert influence in democratic societies if they are not legitimate. The purpose of this survey experiment is to understand how the gender composition of courts affects Americans’ perceptions of judicial legitimacy. We focus on women’s representation on the judiciary since this is one of the most fundamental ways in which the courts have transformed in recent decades. (Another, later, study will explore the impact of race/ethnicity, and future work will examine intersectionality). We argue that citizens’ perceptions of the judiciary depend not only on characteristics of judges, but also on attributes of citizens themselves. We anticipate that citizens’ perceptions of greater women’s representation on the bench will depend on citizens’ gender as well as their political ideology. We stipulate our hypotheses under "Study Information." |
