We begin by extending our thanks to Krewson and Schroedel (2022) for their thoughtful engagement with our recent article (Carrington and French 2021) and to the editors of Social Science Quarterly for inviting this response. We use this opportunity to briefly highlight some points of disagreement between us but, mostly, to underscore what we believe to be a few key takeaways from our exchange. We do this in the hope that it emphasizes important areas and considerations for future research as scholars continue to investigate the precise effects of overtly partisan confirmation hearings, not only on the institutional support for the Supreme Court itself but also for the legitimacy of the political system more broadly. We also hope that our dialog will influence scholars focusing on the contours and robustness of Supreme Court legitimacy elsewhere.
In what follows, we first discuss the relationship between confirmation hearings and institutional support for the Supreme Court. In doing so, we are particularly interested in whether linking such overt partisanship as might manifest within a hearing to the Court is likely to harm the Court’s support among the public. After briefly discussing potential mechanisms through which such hearings might influence broader attitudes toward the Court, we then turn our attention to the measurement of institutional support and the conceptualization of legitimacy in the field more broadly. We argue that scholars should deploy a variety of different measures of institutional support for the Court when trying to evaluate how robust its legitimacy is, as this is a primary reason our findings differ from those of Krewson and Schroedel (2020). The final section questions whether institutional support is even the most preferred indicator of legitimacy for the Court. Instead, we posit that other downstream consequences of legitimacy beyond institutional support (viz., obligation felt toward the institution) might better inform ongoing debates.
Carrington, N. T., & French, C. (2022). Mechanisms, measurements, and manifestations in evaluating the effects of confirmation hearings on Supreme Court legitimacy. Social Science Quarterly (Wiley-Blackwell), 103(5), 1290–1294. https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.13194
