Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/07393148.2023.2203057
W. Niemi
Abstract Recently published, Senator Russ Feingold and Stanford scholar Peter Prindiville’s, The Constitution in Jeopardy: An Unprecedented Effort to Rewrite Our Fundamental Law and What We Can Do About it, criticizes a current Republican effort to call a constitutional convention under Article V of the U.S. Constitution. This paper argues that progressives, like these authors, and defenders of democracy are mistaken to defend the status quo of the U.S. Constitution. Rather, while the political stakes are certainly high, the effort to create a constitutional convention may be an opportunity for U.S. citizens across the spectrum to engage in constitutional politics aimed at altering the Constitution. A fully engaged citizenry and political elite—rather than one political side in a politically polarized society—would be healthier for the future of a successful modern democracy. This essay will engage Feingold and Prindiville‘s challenging argument opposing the Republican effort to call a constitutional convention under Article V which states that Congress, “on the application of legislatures of two-thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments.” Roughly 20 states of the 34 required have passed such resolutions. While there are 27 Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, Article V has never been used to call a convention. A second aim of the essay is to review the democratic critique of the Constitution, and argue that democratic reform is urgently needed. From the perspective of effective modern democracy, the goal of constitutional change should be seen as imperative: consideration should be given to alter the counter-majoritarian and unrepresentative features of the Constitution. These counter-majoritarian constraints in the U.S. Constitution are an institutional cause of “American Exceptionalism:” why is the United States more libertarian, with only a weak social democratic tradition, and always challenged to create efficient and representative policies? In short, I will argue that progressives must win the battle for democracy and make efforts to reform the Constitution.
{"title":"Should Progressives Fight or Welcome the Republican Effort to Call a Constitutional Convention?","authors":"W. Niemi","doi":"10.1080/07393148.2023.2203057","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2023.2203057","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Recently published, Senator Russ Feingold and Stanford scholar Peter Prindiville’s, The Constitution in Jeopardy: An Unprecedented Effort to Rewrite Our Fundamental Law and What We Can Do About it, criticizes a current Republican effort to call a constitutional convention under Article V of the U.S. Constitution. This paper argues that progressives, like these authors, and defenders of democracy are mistaken to defend the status quo of the U.S. Constitution. Rather, while the political stakes are certainly high, the effort to create a constitutional convention may be an opportunity for U.S. citizens across the spectrum to engage in constitutional politics aimed at altering the Constitution. A fully engaged citizenry and political elite—rather than one political side in a politically polarized society—would be healthier for the future of a successful modern democracy. This essay will engage Feingold and Prindiville‘s challenging argument opposing the Republican effort to call a constitutional convention under Article V which states that Congress, “on the application of legislatures of two-thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments.” Roughly 20 states of the 34 required have passed such resolutions. While there are 27 Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, Article V has never been used to call a convention. A second aim of the essay is to review the democratic critique of the Constitution, and argue that democratic reform is urgently needed. From the perspective of effective modern democracy, the goal of constitutional change should be seen as imperative: consideration should be given to alter the counter-majoritarian and unrepresentative features of the Constitution. These counter-majoritarian constraints in the U.S. Constitution are an institutional cause of “American Exceptionalism:” why is the United States more libertarian, with only a weak social democratic tradition, and always challenged to create efficient and representative policies? In short, I will argue that progressives must win the battle for democracy and make efforts to reform the Constitution.","PeriodicalId":46114,"journal":{"name":"New Political Science","volume":"45 1","pages":"380 - 404"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42635151","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/07393148.2023.2205294
Joseph G. Peschek
{"title":"Hijacking the Agenda: Economic Power and Political Influence,","authors":"Joseph G. Peschek","doi":"10.1080/07393148.2023.2205294","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2023.2205294","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46114,"journal":{"name":"New Political Science","volume":"45 1","pages":"414 - 416"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41808906","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/07393148.2023.2203056
K. Carlson
Abstract The Supreme Court, some commentators argue, is at its most undemocratic since the Lochner Era in the 1930s. They point to the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which departs from public opinion on abortion and longstanding constitutional precedence. Dobbs, however, is not an outlier. The Supreme Court made a similar move in Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta. The majority opinion questioned almost 200 years of constitutional interpretation and several decades of congressional policy to enable state governments to exercise criminal authority over non-Indians in Indian Country. This article compares the majority opinion in Castro-Huerta to congressional policy to explore the democratic and constitutional difficulties that can arise when the Supreme Court refuses to defer to Congress—the democratically elected and constitutionally appointed institution for making federal Indian policy. It reveals how the Court’s undemocratic turn extends beyond cases involving individual rights.
{"title":"The Democratic Difficulties of Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta","authors":"K. Carlson","doi":"10.1080/07393148.2023.2203056","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2023.2203056","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The Supreme Court, some commentators argue, is at its most undemocratic since the Lochner Era in the 1930s. They point to the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which departs from public opinion on abortion and longstanding constitutional precedence. Dobbs, however, is not an outlier. The Supreme Court made a similar move in Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta. The majority opinion questioned almost 200 years of constitutional interpretation and several decades of congressional policy to enable state governments to exercise criminal authority over non-Indians in Indian Country. This article compares the majority opinion in Castro-Huerta to congressional policy to explore the democratic and constitutional difficulties that can arise when the Supreme Court refuses to defer to Congress—the democratically elected and constitutionally appointed institution for making federal Indian policy. It reveals how the Court’s undemocratic turn extends beyond cases involving individual rights.","PeriodicalId":46114,"journal":{"name":"New Political Science","volume":"45 1","pages":"239 - 263"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49047052","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/07393148.2023.2205313
Hayley Elszasz
Christina Lafont’s Democracy without Shortcuts intervenes in a vital and active area of research that seeks to guide how we, as scholars and citizens, should navigate the democratic deficit plaguing many parts of the globe. This book sets out to evaluate scholarly proposals to revitalize democracy, and concludes that the most promising avenue is participatory deliberative democracy: a macro-deliberative strategy with institutional mechanisms for citizens to seek justification for the laws to which they are subject. I was increasingly excited about the book as it proceeded from identifying deficiencies in alternative approaches to democracy towards fleshing out Lafont’s positive vision of what deliberative and participatory forms can offer. The section of the book that I found most compelling was the one in which Lafont evaluates the utility of deliberative minipublics (deliberation amongst a random, “representative” selection of the population), due to this section’s relevance to debates around using minipublics to intervene on pressing and existential issues like climate change. Climate change evokes the tensions between strengthening democracy and passing more stringent policy; scholars have debated the conditions under which democratic practice itself holds climate action back. However, deliberative processes like minipublics have demonstrated promise in producing stronger climate policy proposals than their governments had in place prior. After residents propose policies aligned with their priorities, minipublics often face barriers holding governmental bodies to account on implementation. Here, Lafont points to another critical shortcoming of minipublics: as deliberative participants increase their access to information and debate, their views shift farther away from those of the average citizen. One of the benefits of minipublics from a climate legislation perspective—the fact that they may cause people to change their minds often in favor
{"title":"Democracy without Shortcuts: A Participatory Conception of Deliberative Democracy,","authors":"Hayley Elszasz","doi":"10.1080/07393148.2023.2205313","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2023.2205313","url":null,"abstract":"Christina Lafont’s Democracy without Shortcuts intervenes in a vital and active area of research that seeks to guide how we, as scholars and citizens, should navigate the democratic deficit plaguing many parts of the globe. This book sets out to evaluate scholarly proposals to revitalize democracy, and concludes that the most promising avenue is participatory deliberative democracy: a macro-deliberative strategy with institutional mechanisms for citizens to seek justification for the laws to which they are subject. I was increasingly excited about the book as it proceeded from identifying deficiencies in alternative approaches to democracy towards fleshing out Lafont’s positive vision of what deliberative and participatory forms can offer. The section of the book that I found most compelling was the one in which Lafont evaluates the utility of deliberative minipublics (deliberation amongst a random, “representative” selection of the population), due to this section’s relevance to debates around using minipublics to intervene on pressing and existential issues like climate change. Climate change evokes the tensions between strengthening democracy and passing more stringent policy; scholars have debated the conditions under which democratic practice itself holds climate action back. However, deliberative processes like minipublics have demonstrated promise in producing stronger climate policy proposals than their governments had in place prior. After residents propose policies aligned with their priorities, minipublics often face barriers holding governmental bodies to account on implementation. Here, Lafont points to another critical shortcoming of minipublics: as deliberative participants increase their access to information and debate, their views shift farther away from those of the average citizen. One of the benefits of minipublics from a climate legislation perspective—the fact that they may cause people to change their minds often in favor","PeriodicalId":46114,"journal":{"name":"New Political Science","volume":"45 1","pages":"416 - 418"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49164879","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/07393148.2023.2205288
C. Daum
Abstract A majority of Americans agree that our democracy is at risk, but they disagree about the location of these threats. This article examines how debates about who constitutes the “we the people” seeded a politics of resentment that raised the saliency of the many antidemocratic tendencies and institutional features of the American political system. As the American electorate becomes more diverse, questions about whose voices, histories and votes should count have become increasingly fraught, and Donald Trump’s presidency exacerbated these tensions. The growing political divide and the public’s increased awareness of and attention to the anti-democratic features of our political system are pushing us closer to a political precipice as a minority of Americans seek to maximize their power at the expense of an increasingly frustrated majority. This is problematic in a democracy where confidence in the system requires individuals to believe that their participation matters and counts.
{"title":"We the People and America’s Constitutional Crisis: Introduction to the Special Issue","authors":"C. Daum","doi":"10.1080/07393148.2023.2205288","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2023.2205288","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract A majority of Americans agree that our democracy is at risk, but they disagree about the location of these threats. This article examines how debates about who constitutes the “we the people” seeded a politics of resentment that raised the saliency of the many antidemocratic tendencies and institutional features of the American political system. As the American electorate becomes more diverse, questions about whose voices, histories and votes should count have become increasingly fraught, and Donald Trump’s presidency exacerbated these tensions. The growing political divide and the public’s increased awareness of and attention to the anti-democratic features of our political system are pushing us closer to a political precipice as a minority of Americans seek to maximize their power at the expense of an increasingly frustrated majority. This is problematic in a democracy where confidence in the system requires individuals to believe that their participation matters and counts.","PeriodicalId":46114,"journal":{"name":"New Political Science","volume":"45 1","pages":"207 - 223"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48454740","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/07393148.2023.2203058
H. Hirsch
Abstract It is widely conceded that the Supreme Court has struggled to create a coherent, consistent set of principles on which to base its decisions about the relationship between Church and State. This paper argues that what would help bring conceptual clarity to this contentious set of issues is a historically informed theory that can be labeled developmental, or structural. It presents such a theory by examining two sets of facts: First, a fact that most constitutional scholars have overlooked–that the Constitution and Bill of Rights were drafted and ratified during a period of relative religious calm in between periods of great evangelical fervor, namely the First and Second Great Awakenings (the “accident”). Second, as is well known, that the framers did not foresee the development of stable political parties (the “mistake”). This essay first briefly summarizes the state of the law in this area, and then examines the ways in which the Second Great Awakening combined this accident and this mistake to transform American culture and politics, including electoral politics, and the implications of that transformation.
{"title":"One Accident, One Mistake: Evangelicals, Religious Establishment, and American Political Development","authors":"H. Hirsch","doi":"10.1080/07393148.2023.2203058","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2023.2203058","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract It is widely conceded that the Supreme Court has struggled to create a coherent, consistent set of principles on which to base its decisions about the relationship between Church and State. This paper argues that what would help bring conceptual clarity to this contentious set of issues is a historically informed theory that can be labeled developmental, or structural. It presents such a theory by examining two sets of facts: First, a fact that most constitutional scholars have overlooked–that the Constitution and Bill of Rights were drafted and ratified during a period of relative religious calm in between periods of great evangelical fervor, namely the First and Second Great Awakenings (the “accident”). Second, as is well known, that the framers did not foresee the development of stable political parties (the “mistake”). This essay first briefly summarizes the state of the law in this area, and then examines the ways in which the Second Great Awakening combined this accident and this mistake to transform American culture and politics, including electoral politics, and the implications of that transformation.","PeriodicalId":46114,"journal":{"name":"New Political Science","volume":"45 1","pages":"306 - 334"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45685424","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/07393148.2023.2203059
J. Lluch
Abstract Many forms of differentiated citizenship have been implemented by states in different regions and epochs. This article presents a novel category: “asymmetric territorial citizenship,” which is a type of differentiation that within the same state establishes categories of citizenship, some of which are fragmentary or inferior, and thus essentially creating horizontal categories of territorialized state membership, or territorialized citizenship regimes. The existence of asymmetry within the same state shatters the commonplace expectation that citizenship is unitary, equal, and homogenous. Empirically, asymmetric citizenship originates in the practices and policies of imperial powers in some of their territories and in the relations of domination and control of colonialism. But, asymmetric citizenship also exists today in the U.S unincorporated territories (and, in particular, in Puerto Rico). I examine the creation of this novel category by the Insular Cases and its progeny, and relate it to the fundamental elements of citizenship.
{"title":"Asymmetric Territorial Citizenship","authors":"J. Lluch","doi":"10.1080/07393148.2023.2203059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2023.2203059","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Many forms of differentiated citizenship have been implemented by states in different regions and epochs. This article presents a novel category: “asymmetric territorial citizenship,” which is a type of differentiation that within the same state establishes categories of citizenship, some of which are fragmentary or inferior, and thus essentially creating horizontal categories of territorialized state membership, or territorialized citizenship regimes. The existence of asymmetry within the same state shatters the commonplace expectation that citizenship is unitary, equal, and homogenous. Empirically, asymmetric citizenship originates in the practices and policies of imperial powers in some of their territories and in the relations of domination and control of colonialism. But, asymmetric citizenship also exists today in the U.S unincorporated territories (and, in particular, in Puerto Rico). I examine the creation of this novel category by the Insular Cases and its progeny, and relate it to the fundamental elements of citizenship.","PeriodicalId":46114,"journal":{"name":"New Political Science","volume":"45 1","pages":"288 - 305"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46715146","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/07393148.2023.2205321
J. Patrick
Klimat is not a highly-detailed or technical description of the processes of climate change as they affect Russia. It clearly analyses the current and likely future economic effects of global mean temperature increase on Russia’s economic growth model. The book is a useful, well-done summary of a set of political-economic issues from an elite perspective. The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 can be seen as a consequence of the dynamics and dilemmas outlined in the book. If Russia were ever to recover the industrial and agricultural resources of Ukraine, which it arguably needs to emerge from the growth trap Gustafson has delineated, it needed to act before global events, including climate change, made it absolutely impossible for it to do so. But the failure of the gamble that the conquest could be accomplished rapidly and at low cost will hasten and intensify the economic consequences of the exhaustion of the hydrocarbon export model on which the Putin era has depended.
{"title":"The United Nations as Leviathan: Global Governance in the Post-American World","authors":"J. Patrick","doi":"10.1080/07393148.2023.2205321","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2023.2205321","url":null,"abstract":"Klimat is not a highly-detailed or technical description of the processes of climate change as they affect Russia. It clearly analyses the current and likely future economic effects of global mean temperature increase on Russia’s economic growth model. The book is a useful, well-done summary of a set of political-economic issues from an elite perspective. The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 can be seen as a consequence of the dynamics and dilemmas outlined in the book. If Russia were ever to recover the industrial and agricultural resources of Ukraine, which it arguably needs to emerge from the growth trap Gustafson has delineated, it needed to act before global events, including climate change, made it absolutely impossible for it to do so. But the failure of the gamble that the conquest could be accomplished rapidly and at low cost will hasten and intensify the economic consequences of the exhaustion of the hydrocarbon export model on which the Putin era has depended.","PeriodicalId":46114,"journal":{"name":"New Political Science","volume":"45 1","pages":"422 - 424"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44255559","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/07393148.2023.2203062
L. Jenkins
Abstract Roe v. Wade was overturned in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June 2022. The pro-choice movement, like the pro-life movement after Roe, has suffered a major legal loss after Dobbs and should learn from the pro-life movement’s incrementalist legal strategies to slowly rebuild a constitutional right to abortion. Post-Dobbs, the pro-choice movement should pursue state constitutional level to create state constitutional rights to abortion. However, the pro-choice movement should also pursue incrementalist federal constitutional litigation in “hard cases,” cases where women with life-threatening pregnancy complications are denied abortion care, to rebuild a federal constitutional right to an abortion. While a federal constitutional case for a right to an abortion may not initially translate into legal victories, such arguments can increase public support for the pro-choice movement by reframing abortion as health care and transforming public perceptions of the women who seek abortions.
{"title":"Roe is Dead, Long Live the Courts: The Role of Courts in a Post-Roe America","authors":"L. Jenkins","doi":"10.1080/07393148.2023.2203062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2023.2203062","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Roe v. Wade was overturned in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June 2022. The pro-choice movement, like the pro-life movement after Roe, has suffered a major legal loss after Dobbs and should learn from the pro-life movement’s incrementalist legal strategies to slowly rebuild a constitutional right to abortion. Post-Dobbs, the pro-choice movement should pursue state constitutional level to create state constitutional rights to abortion. However, the pro-choice movement should also pursue incrementalist federal constitutional litigation in “hard cases,” cases where women with life-threatening pregnancy complications are denied abortion care, to rebuild a federal constitutional right to an abortion. While a federal constitutional case for a right to an abortion may not initially translate into legal victories, such arguments can increase public support for the pro-choice movement by reframing abortion as health care and transforming public perceptions of the women who seek abortions.","PeriodicalId":46114,"journal":{"name":"New Political Science","volume":"45 1","pages":"264 - 287"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49454547","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/07393148.2023.2208432
Ryan C. Black, Ryan J. Owens, Patrick C. Wohlfarth
Abstract This article analyzes public attitudes toward replacing lifetime tenure with term limits for federal judges, including U.S. Supreme Court justices. We employ novel data that we collected from a nationwide survey experiment. We find that although partisans are less supportive of proposals from their opponents, the magnitude of this effect is much smaller than one might expect in today’s polarized environment. We also find that a respondent’s support for term limits is a function of his or her subjective ideological agreement with the Supreme Court. Finally, we demonstrate that although support for term limits is generally high, only a modest subset of reform supporters believe that term limits should be a top political priority. These supporters also tend to exhibit weaker levels of support for the rule of law more generally. Taken together, the results contribute to our understanding of an issue of significant importance.
{"title":"Considering Constitutional Change: Survey Evidence on Public Attitudes Toward Term Limits for Federal Judges","authors":"Ryan C. Black, Ryan J. Owens, Patrick C. Wohlfarth","doi":"10.1080/07393148.2023.2208432","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/07393148.2023.2208432","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article analyzes public attitudes toward replacing lifetime tenure with term limits for federal judges, including U.S. Supreme Court justices. We employ novel data that we collected from a nationwide survey experiment. We find that although partisans are less supportive of proposals from their opponents, the magnitude of this effect is much smaller than one might expect in today’s polarized environment. We also find that a respondent’s support for term limits is a function of his or her subjective ideological agreement with the Supreme Court. Finally, we demonstrate that although support for term limits is generally high, only a modest subset of reform supporters believe that term limits should be a top political priority. These supporters also tend to exhibit weaker levels of support for the rule of law more generally. Taken together, the results contribute to our understanding of an issue of significant importance.","PeriodicalId":46114,"journal":{"name":"New Political Science","volume":"45 1","pages":"335 - 358"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46745879","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}