Partisan cues have a significant influence on the public’ssupport for the Supreme Court

This month the Supreme Court is due to announce its decision in the King v. Burwell case, which will determine whether federally-run health care exchanges may provide subsidies to individuals under the Affordable Care Act. Many Republicans hope the Court rules that such subsidies may not be provided under the text of the statute, while some Democrats, including President Obama, argue that the case should never have been heard. But is the public’s opinion of the Supreme Court shaped by such partisan messages? In new research, Tom Clark and John Kastellec find that the public’s opinion of the court is shaped by messages from their co-partisans: among members of the public, Democrats and Republicans are much more likely to support limitations to the independence of the Supreme Court when they are told that such limitations have been proposed by members of their own party. They write that while evaluations of the Supreme Court may be easily shaped by partisan attacks, so long as one party supports its decisions the Court may be insulated from this criticism to some degree.