{"id":1097,"date":"2023-05-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-11T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/?p=1097"},"modified":"2023-05-10T19:59:19","modified_gmt":"2023-05-10T23:59:19","slug":"media-reports-of-public-opinion-of-courts-a-sort-of-self-fulfilling-prophecy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/2023\/05\/11\/media-reports-of-public-opinion-of-courts-a-sort-of-self-fulfilling-prophecy\/","title":{"rendered":"Media Reports of Public Opinion of Courts a Sort of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Because the only information most Americans get about court decisions (as just about any other public institution) comes from an increasingly opinion-dominated<\/a> professional news media, and those media emphasize the politics and personalities of major judicial decisions rather than the actual legal issues and arguments, it is not surprising, as ABC News recently reported,1<\/a><\/sup> that public opinion tends to accept the narrative that judicial decisions are driven by politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We don’t have to rely solely on major media. The United States Supreme Court’s website is a comprehensive resource to learn about the cases before it, the arguments of the parties and the Court’s own decision. A reader can find all the briefs, on the day the case is argued a live audio feed is provided, later that day both the recorded feed and a transcript is available, and of course all the opinions are available as soon as they are released. Other courts are not quite so comprehensive, but usually at least the decisions can be found.((New reports of judicial decision, at least the on-line stories, should link to a freely available opinion or at least provide sufficient information, like case name and docket number, that a search can locate it.))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, the subtext of the most media coverage is that being driven by politics is a bad thing only of the judicial decisions under discussion are viewed as supportive of conservative policies. Many conservatives advocate interpreting constitutional and legislative texts according to the meaning they would have conveyed at the time of their adoption. Liberals decry reliance upon originalism<\/em> and might well argue that the law’s text must not get in the way of its primary goal which is . . . well, whatever the judge wants to say it is. If that’s not politics, what is?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jay Bohn<\/p>\n\n\n\n

May 11, 2023<\/p>\n

  1. More say politics, not the law, drive Supreme Court decisions: POLL<\/a><\/em> [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Because the only information most Americans get about court decisions (as just about any other public institution) comes from an increasingly opinion-dominated professional news media, and those media emphasize the politics and personalities of major judicial decisions rather than the actual legal issues and arguments, it is not surprising, as ABC News recently reported,1 that … Continue reading “Media Reports of Public Opinion of Courts a Sort of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","category-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1097"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1102,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097\/revisions\/1102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bohn.org\/wpmocha\/peanutgallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}