Public Opinion and Constitutional Controversy

by Nathaniel Persily (Editor), Jack Citrin

American politics is most notably characterized by the heated debates on constitutional interpretation at the core of its ever-raging culture wars, and the coverage of these lingering disputes are often inundated with public-opinion polls. Yet for all their prominence in contemporary society, there has never been an all-inclusive, systematic study of public opinion and how it impacts the courts and electoral politics.

Public Opinion and Constitutional Controversy is the first book to provide a comprehensive analysis of American public opinion on the key constitutional controversies of the twentieth century, including desegregation, school prayer, abortion, the death penalty, affirmative action, gay rights, assisted suicide, and national security, to name just a few. With essays focusing on each issue in-depth, Nathaniel Persily, Jack Citrin, Patrick Egan, and an established group of scholars utilize cutting edge public-opinion data to illustrate these contemporary debates, methodically examining each one and how public attitudes have shifted over time, especially in the wake of prominent Supreme Court decisions. More than just a compilation of available data, however, these essays join the "popular constitutionalism" debate between those who advocate a dominant role for courts in constitutional adjudication and those who prefer a more pluralized constitutional discourse. Each essay also vividly
details the gap between the public and the Supreme Court on these hotly contested issues and analyzes how and why this divergence of opinion has grown or shrunk over the last fifty years.

Ultimately, Public Opinion and Constitutional Controversy sheds light on a major yet understudied part of American politics, providing an incisive look at the crucial part played by the voice of the people on the issues that have become an indelible part of the modern-day political landscape.

376 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Nathaniel Persily, J.D. (Stanford University, 1998: Ph.D., Political Science, University of California at Berkeley, 2002; M.A. & B.A., Political Science, Yale University, 1992) is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, with appointments in the departments of Political Science and Communication. Prior to joining Stanford, Persily taught at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and as a visiting professor at Harvard, New York University, Princeton, the University of Amsterdam, and the University of Melbourne. Persily’s scholarship and legal practice focus on American election law.

He was president of the Stanford Law Review, and has served as a special master or court-appointed expert to craft congressional or legislative districting plans for Georgia, Maryland, Connecticut, and New York, and as the senior research director for the Presidential Commission on Election Administration.

Reviews

[Benedict · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the book fairly unbiased. People who approach constitutional law with an idea that it's supposed to be some thing or other may find some of the facts disturbing, but the authors really do seem genuinely focused on their project of trying to determine whether the decisions of the Supreme Court relate to Public Opinion in any way (e.g., being influenced by it, or influencing it). So they look at whether pressure builds or fades after big court decisions.

Now, I'm only a little bit interested in that project . . . but I'm fairly interested in what the public opinion around all these topics has been, is, and is becoming. And so I usually found the presentation of that clear and well-organized. Sometimes the statistics went a bit over my head, but the authors do a good job of explaining in lay terms what's been done (e.g., "we controlled for other variables" instead of "multivariate regression analysis," or some such thing). So a statistician may be able to dispute the claims being made around any given set of data (and presumably each side of most of these debates has employed statisticians to make the facts look best presentable in the past).

I found it a helpful orientation, with some things that surprised me. I haven't read each chapter, but the four or five that were of personal interest were well done and certainly sufficient to get the flavor of the book. Four stars, with one held in reserve because the author's actual topic may be a bit too arcane for most readers to find compelling.