Untitled

You will be able to describe the role that law plays in democratic societies after you've read this chapter.

The institutional rules and political influences that shape the Supreme Court are outlined.

Keeping that narrative going is aided by the marble pillars, red velvet drapes, and black robes.

Hamilton assumed that the judgments would remain legal even though he had the power of neither the sword nor the purse.

Without military might or budgetary power, the Supreme Court decided who would be the next president of the United States, and it was done right down the party lines.

On a five to four vote, the Supreme Court overturned the decision of the Florida Supreme Court to allow a recount of votes in the Florida election and awarded electoral victory to Bush.

Al Gore wanted the recount so he could get the few hundred votes he needed for victory.

The vote counting was ordered by the Florida secretary of state, who is Bush's brother.

In the order for the stay, there was a noticeable split between the justices, which reappeared in the final decision.

The majority claimed that if the recount went forward under the Florida Supreme Court's order with different standards for counting the vote in different counties, it would amount to a denial of equal protection of the laws.

The amount of work needed to conduct a fair recount was not done before the December 12 deadline.

The Supreme Court ruling in Bush v. Gore ended the state recount after the 2000 presidential election was too close to call.

Everyone debated the issue from angry demonstrators outside the Court to learned commentators in scholarly journals, from families at the dinner table to editorial writers in the nation's press.

You park where you please and go to the drugstore that sells drugs of all sorts, from Prozac to booze and beer.

You hope the dealer will accept what you have to offer in trade because there are no rules governing the production or usage of currency.

Life is looking good as you head back out to the street, but you find that your car is gone.

You curse yourself for forgetting to set the car alarm and for not using the wheel lock, because theft is not illegal.

Tracking down your car is almost impossible since there are no vehicle registration laws to prove you own it in the first place.

It isn't much of a prize, covered with dents and nicks from clashing with other cars at intersection where there are neither stop signs nor lights.

When you arrive home to enjoy your beer in peace and to gain a respite from the war zone you call your local community, you find that another family has moved in while you were shopping.

John Locke and Thomas Hobbes both imagined a world without laws.

Locke's residents had to mount a constant defense of their possessions and lives because they found the lawless life to be inconvenient.

Laws can be used by citizens and political actors to create new rules that produce more favorable outcomes for themselves.

Limits and restrictions that get in our way, or that make life a little easier, are the sorts of rules we have been discussing.

The narrative that our legal system is founded on rules that represent basic and enduring principles of justice is something we would like to believe in.

Political human beings create laws to help them get resources.

For political advantage, we have laws that give large states more power in the process of electing a president and that allow electoral districts to be drawn by the majority party.

There are laws that give tax breaks to homeowners or subsidize dairy farmers.

Laws make life more convenient even if we have to restrict our actions.

Laws provide security for people and their property so that we may go about our daily lives in relative harmony.

Laws reflect society's values, such as that murder is wrong or that parents should not be allowed to abuse children.

Most governments in the industrialized world, including many European countries, South America, Japan, the province of Quebec in Canada, and the state of Louisiana, have a legal system founded on a comprehensive legal code usually generated by the legislature.

The U.S. legal system is based on common law, which decisions were applied uniformly across the land.

Judges in such a system have more power in determining what the law is than do judges in civil-law systems, and their job is to determine and apply the law as an impartial referee, not to take an active role in discovering the truth.

Legislators in the US are more interested in responding to their own needs than in creating a coherent body of law.

A customer sued a chain for serving coffee that was determined to be dangerously hot.

The case was highly publicized in the media, drawing criticism that the verdict was a representation of Americans' propensity for frivolous lawsuits.

The company refused to pay her medical bills after she suffered severe burns from the coffee.

Our trial procedures are presumed to reveal the truth through the clash of skilled professionals.

France and Germany have trial procedures that give a much more active role to the judge as a fact finder.

In these systems, the judge questions witnesses and seeks evidence, and the prosecution and defense have relatively minor roles.

The idea of a system that focuses on finding the truth, that reduces the role of lawyers, that limits the expensive process of evidence gathering, and that makes trials cheaper and faster in general sounds very appealing in an era when American courtrooms have become theatrical stages.

In a society with a heavy emphasis on due process rights, with a litigious disposition, the legal system plays a prominent role in many of our lives.

We can give you some basics, even though we can't condense three years of law school vocabulary.

If a party feels that a point of law wasn't applied correctly, the case may wind up in an appeals court, where cases are only appealed on points of law, not interpretations of facts.

A new trial at the entry level can be ordered if new facts are shown.

If you are involved in a civil dispute and have been arrested, there are ways to resolve it outside of court.

If you want to avoid a lengthy and acrimonious legal battle, look into mediation and arbitration.

If you are charged with a crime, you have no choice but to go to court, but often people enter into civil disputes without a clear idea of the costs involved.

Some lawyers will work on a contingency basis, taking a percentage of the settlement they win for you, but others will charge by the hour.

Cases can drag on for years, through multiple levels of appeals, and can become a major drain on one's energy and resources.

Judges make rulings on points of law and instruct the jury how to use them in a trial.

Legal questions that are alleged to have arisen from an earlier trial are ruled on by panels of judges in appeals courts.

It is a good opportunity to see how the system works from the inside, as well as to make a contribution to the nation.

Having an active pool of willing jurors is important to the nation's civic health since all citizens are entitled to a jury trial.

More often than citizens of other countries, Americans file civil suits for compensation from actions that are not defined as crimes, such as medical malpractice or breach of contract.

Scholars argue that the large number of lawsuits in the United States is a measure of our openness and democratic concern for the rights of all citizens, and that litigation is unavoidable in democracies committed to individuals' freedoms and to citizens' rights to defend themselves from harm by others.

Since premiums are going up due to lack of Republican support for the program, we may be reverting to the days when litigation was the only way to deal with unexpected disaster in the form of a car accident, faulty production of appliances, or medical tragedy.

According to some experts, Americans have come to expect "total justice," that everything bad that happens can be blamed on someone, who should compensate them for their harm.

Such suits are costly not only to the individuals or institutions that must defend themselves but also to taxpayers, who support the system as a whole, paying the salaries of judges and legal staff.

How evidence is gathered and used, how defendants are treated, and what juries can be told are all procedural laws.

Our laws are filled with procedural protections for those who must deal with the legal system because our founders were concerned with limiting the power of government to prevent tyranny.

Since these laws refer to crimes against the state, the government is in charge of prosecuting these cases.

Depending on the severity of the crime and the provisions of the law, the person may be sentenced to community service, jail time, or even death.

It is not a crime against the state to cause injury to a specific individual if one person files a lawsuit against another for the same thing.

The purpose of the government is not to harm society, but to give individuals a forum in which they can peacefully resolve their differences.

An example would be a drunk driver who causes an accident that hurts another person.

The drunk driver could face criminal charges and be sued by the injured party for medical expenses, missed income, and pain and suffering.

The bar that served the alcohol to the drunk driver might be sued by the injured person if they want to get compensation.

A fine might be included in a civil suit if the individual caused the injury.

The burden of proof is easier to meet in civil trials because we think government poses a bigger threat to our liberties than we do.

In addition, constitutional law refers to the many decisions that have been made by lower court judges in the United States, as well as by the justices on the Supreme Court, in their attempts to decide precisely what the Constitution means and how it should be interpreted.

Most laws in the country are made by Congress, the state legislature, and even the president.

Legislators make statutory laws at the state or national level.

We are told to wear seatbelts, pay taxes, and stay home on Memorial Day.

The American justice system makes decisions on criminal cases, but also allows citizens to seek compensation for injury or damage.

While Bill Cosby was sentenced to ten years in prison for drugging and sexually abusing a woman, he was also involved in several civil cases.

Legislators delegate some of their power to bureaucratic agencies and departments because they can't be experts on all matters.

Administrative laws include the thousands of regulations that agencies create concerning how much coloring and other Additives can be in the food we buy, how airports will monitor air traffic, what kind of material can be used to make pajamas for children, and what deductions can be taken legally when figuring your income tax These laws are not made by people who are accountable to the citizens of America, but by elected representatives.

We explained in Chapter 8 that these laws need to be binding only during the president's administration.

They use laws to try to achieve security, predictability, peaceful conflict resolution, and a non disruptive distribution of social costs and benefits.

The results of the legal process are shaped by the American system's common-law roots and litigious nature.

The court system we set up to administer the law is our own and owes a lot to the British.

If judges demonstrate good behavior, they will be appointed for life and will not have their pay reduced while they are in office.

The writers of the Constitution sidestepped the controversy by dropping the issue of court structure and power into the lap of a future Congress.

The Judiciary Act of 1789 was needed to fill in the gaps on how the court system would be organized.

The idea of an independent judiciary headed by a supreme court was new to the founding fathers.

Several of George Washington's original appointees to the Court turned him down because they thought he was a minor player in the new government.

The city planners forgot to design a location for the capital when it was moved to Washington, D.C.

This power allows the Court to review acts of the other branches of government and to invalidate them if they are found to be against the principles of the Constitution.

Answering critics who said that judicial review would give too much power to a group of unelected men to overrule the will of the majority, Hamilton said that the reverse was true.

Judicial review would place the true will of the people over momentary passions and interests that were reflected in Congress if the Constitution was allowed to check the legislature.

Thurgood Marshall secured his place in legal history when he was a special counsel for the National Association for the advancement of Colored People.

The letter appointing William Marbury to be justice of the peace for the District of Columbia was overlooked and not delivered.

He focused on the part of the act that gave the Court authority to make the decision instead of ruling on the question of Marbury's appointment.

Although Marshall thought Marbury should get the appointment, he could not enforce it because the relevant part of the Judiciary Act of 1789 was unconstitutional.

He said that the Court's power to decide what the Constitution meant was emphatically the province of the judicial department.

The power of judicial review was created by him to vastly expand the potential influence of the Court.

Congress and the president still have the power to appoint judges, change the number of members and jurisdiction of the Court, to impeach justices, and to amend the Constitution, but the Court now has the ultimate check over the other two branches.

Congress is tasked with designing the details of the judicial system because the Constitution is largely silent about the courts.

The extraconstitutional power of judicial review was given to the Court by John Marshall, the third chief justice.

The Judiciary Act of 1789 was put together in response to the Constitution's open invitation to design a federal court system.

The system created by this act was too simple to handle the complex legal needs and the growing number of cases in the new nation, however, and it was gradually crafted by Congress into the very complex network of federal courts we have today.

The issue of authority to hear particular cases is a key concept in understanding our dual court system.

The kind of question raised or the parties involved are what determines if a case goes to federal courts.

The choice of a court is dictated by constitutional rule and statutory law, but still leaves room for political maneuvering.

Rather, a panel of five to nine justices, as supreme court judges are called, meet to discuss the case, make a decision, and issue an opinion.

The procedures range from appointment by the governor to the more democratic method of election by the state population as a whole.

Supporters say they give people a voice, while keeping judges accountable and in line with public opinion.

In 2002 the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable spent $25 million to influence judicial elections across the country.

In the following section, we discuss the importance of the Supreme Court in the American political system.

The district courts have original jurisdiction over all cases involving any question of a federal nature or any issue that involves the Constitution, Congress, or any other aspect of the federal government.

Criminal charges stemming from a violation of the federal anticarjacking statute or a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency are examples of the wide-ranging issues.

In trials at the district level, witnesses are called to testify and are questioned and cross-examined by the attorneys representing both sides.

Even though it's small, the Twelfth Circuit Court has a large caseload because it hears all appeals involving government agencies.

The legal reasoning used to reach the decision in the district court is scrutinized, but the facts of the case are assumed to be the truth and not debated.

They will be appointed by the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate, and will serve lifetime terms under good behavior.

Historically, federal judgeships have been awarded on the basis of several criteria, including rewarding political friendship, supporting and cultivating future support, especially of a gender or ethnic or racial group, and Throughout most of the country's history, the courts have been demographically uniform--white, male President Jimmy Carter promised to increase the diversity of the federal courts.

The White House counsel said that Obama wanted the federal courts to look like America.

The ideological or policy positions of the person appointed to the federal judge's seat is an increasingly important qualification.

Richard Nixon ran for president in the 70s on the idea that the courts were soft on crime and needed conservative correction.

The Senate confirmation process has become more rancorous as presidents have taken advantage of the opportunity to shape the courts.

Republican presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush made a conscious effort to shift what they saw as the liberal nature of court appointments in the years since the New Deal, and Democrat Jimmy Carter countered with liberal appointees, but the moderate ideology of most of Democratic president Bill Many of the Republicans who supported the Obama nominations supported them in order to stall the Obama administration's efforts and gain leverage for other things.

The Senate majority leader used the nuclear option to get rid of the filibuster on non-Supreme Court federal nominees.

A president with a majority in the Senate can make a big impact on the judiciary.

The Republicans were more effective at shaping the bench before the recent changes in Senate procedure.

Republican senators have voted in lock step to confirm every judge that Bush has nominated.

The principle of senatorial courtesy is related to the appointment of federal judges.

Even if the president got the Senate Judiciary Committee to hold a hearing on the nomination, it was highly unlikely that the candidate would be confirmed.

Since 1946, the American Bar Association has been evaluating the legal qualifications of potential nominees.

Most federal judges receive the ABA's professional blessing, even though poorly rated candidates are occasionally nominated and confirmed.

The Bush administration stopped seeking the ABA's ratings of its nominees in 2001, breaking a tradition started by Eisenhower.

"Circuit and District Court Judges: Profile of Select Characteristics" was published by the Congressional Research Service.

The dual court system in America is shaped by rules that determine who will win and who will lose in legal disputes.

The nine justices don't wear wigs for their British colleagues in the House of Lords, but they do wear long black robes to hear their cases and sit against a beautiful background of red silk.

The American public seems to think that the Court gets higher ratings than Congress or the president, and that it doesn't suffer as much from the popular cynicism about government that afflicts the other branches.

The members of the Court are not removed from the political world around them because of the rule of lifetime tenure.

In the remainder of this chapter, we get to know the Court, not to stop loving it, but to gain a healthy respect for the powerful political institution it is.

In a perfect world, the wisest and most intelligent jurists in the country would be appointed to the Supreme Court to make important constitutional decisions.

The nomination process for Supreme Court justices is often a battleground of competing views of the public good because of the need for these elected officials to be responsive to their constituency.

Within hours of the announcement of Justice Antonin Scalia's death in February 2016 Senate majority leaderMitch McConnell announced that the Senate would not hold hearings on anyone President Obama might nominate.

McConnell was trying to hold out for the election of a Republican president who would nominate someone as conservative as Scalia had been when he refused to consider Obama's nominee.

The impact of the gender shift on the Court will not be clear for several years.

There is too much at stake in Supreme Court appointments to give any individual senator veto power.

The president doesn't have a list of criteria to choose from when making critical appointments to the Supreme Court.

The demands of the president's job suggest that merit, shared ideology, political reward, and demographic representation all play a role in this choice.

The Reagan administration was embarrassed when a National Public Radio reporter broke the story that Supreme Court nominee Douglas Ginsburg had used marijuana in college.

Clarence Thomas was accused of sexual harassment by a former employee and was already under attack for his lack of judicial experience and low ABA rating.

Donald Trump doesn't consider the ABA ratings important in the nomination process.

Supreme Court justices have opinions on the role of government, the rights of individuals, and the relationship between the two.

When their nominee's ideological stripes turn out to be different than they had anticipated, presidents are sometimes surprised.

The biggest mistake I ever made was appointing Chief Justice Earl Warren, who turned out to be quite liberal in his legal judgments.

Most presidents appoint members of their own party in an attempt to get ideologically compatible justices.

The Great Depression of the 1930s was characterized by massive unemployment and economic stagnation, but Roosevelt was hampered by a Court that was opposed to his efforts to regulate business and industry and skeptical of his constitutional power to do so.

Most presidents try to pack the Court, building their own legacies with appointees who they hope will perpetuate their vision of government and politics.

The two constitutional principles of separation of powers and checks and balances were in danger because of Roosevelt's plan.

Roosevelt would have made a point of Hamilton's claim that the judiciary was the least dangerous branch of government, while raising the power of the presidency.

The public backlash may have contributed to the slowing of the New Deal and the Republican victories in 1938 that left Roosevelt with a weakened Democratic majority in Congress.

His appointments to the Supreme Court put his stamp on it more effectively than any other president since Washington.

All interpretations of the Constitution must be informed by the intentions of the founding fathers, according to the view of justices.

Robert Bork, a Reagan nominee who failed to be confirmed by the Senate, is a strict constructionist.

When the senators asked him about the right to privacy, another right enforced by the Court but not specified in the Constitution, Bork, the opposite position to strict constructionism, what might be the Constitution is a living document, that the founders could not possibly have anticipated all possible future circumstances.

Even though the Second Amendment refers to the right to bear arms in the context of militia membership, many conservatives would argue that this needs to be understood to protect the right to bear arms in a modern context.

Liberals rely on a strict reading of the Second Amendment to support their calls for tighter gun controls.

It's difficult for a president to know where a nominee stands on a strict constructionist-interpretivist scale if they don't have a lot of previous decisions in lower courts.

Along with the strict constructionist-interpretivist divide, another ideological element rose in importance during the George W. Bush administration.

Bush was concerned about finding nominees who would interpret the Constitution in a way that supported the power of the president.

Efforts by Congress to create independent agencies outside of the president's purview are unconstitutional.

Efforts by Congress and the courts to limit or interpret executive power in matters of national security were objected to by the administration.

Both of the men Bush appointed to the Court, Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito, are supporters of a strong executive office.

President Obama's Supreme Court nominees were reflective of his own interpretationivist ideology.

His first nomination, who joined the Court in September 2009, was more controversial for her comments about her race and gender than for her judicial views.

The Senate confirmed Neil Gorsuch to the Court after Republicans refused to hold hearings on Obama's nomination.

The simple meaning of the words in laws is what matters, not their congressional or historical context.

Since Nixon made a campaign issue of not appointing justices who were soft on crime, Republican presidents have been careful to pick conservative nominees.

The death of Antonin Scalia in February 2016 left a hole in the Supreme Court that President Obama hoped to fill with the more moderateMerrick Garland.

Neil Gorsuch was appointed to the bench after Donald Trump won the presidency.

More than half of the people nominated to the Supreme Court have a personal relationship with the president.

The White House counsel was forced to withdraw her name from consideration because she wasn't sufficiently qualified.

In the past, presidents wanted to make sure that there was at least one Catholic and one Jew on the court.

The Senate majority leader immediately rejected any hearings for Obama's nominee to replace Scalia.

The Senate Judiciary Committee holds hearings and invites the nominee, colleagues, and concerned interest groups to testify.

The minority party can still influence the choice if the Senate Republicans don't stop the tradition of using the filibuster.

When interest groups and public opinion get involved in a controversial confirmation battle, the Bork and Thomas hearings are an excellent example of what can happen.

The Supreme Court Database is the basis of the UC Berkeley School of Law.

The Supreme Court can't possibly hear the eight thousand petitions it receives each year, so screening is necessary to reduce the number to the more manageable eighty to ninety that the Court finally hears.

The records of the case will be called up from the lower court where it was last heard if it is granted certiorari.

The last rule is open to interpretation by the justices and they may not all agree on what constitutes a political question.

The rules alone do not narrow the Court's caseload to a sufficiently small number of cases, and an enormous amount of work remains for the justices and their staffs, particularly their law clerks.

They must read all the petitions and summarize them in a two to five-page memo that includes a recommendation to the justices on whether to hear the case.

Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch require their clerks to read and evaluate all the petitions, which is why seven of the nine current justices of the Court are in a pool.

The clerks in the justices' offices read the memos again and make comments on the advisability of hearing the cases.

The memos with the clerks' comments go to the justices, who decide which cases to grant cert and which to deny.

There are cases that other justices think should be discussed in their Friday afternoon meetings.

The screening process for cases to be heard by the Supreme Court is less than 5 percent.

The decisions to grant cert are made by novice lawyers without much direction, who operate under enormous time and performance pressures, and by the justices, who rely on the evaluations of these young lawyers while bringing to the process the full array of values and ideologies for which they were.

Between 70 and 80 percent of the appeals filed by the federal government are granted cert by the justices, a far greater proportion than for any other group.

Even though she'd told the story many times, her voice still echoed with the frustration of that first job hunt.

The former Supreme Court justice's story was both sad and ludicrous when we talked to her before she retired.

Maybe it's too easy to point the finger at the sexism of the private legal profession in 1950s America for the extraordinary career in public law ofSandra Day O'Connor.

The recurring themes in the life of Sandra Day O'Connor are sincerity in her efforts, determination to make a difference, persistence in the face of opposition, and independence in charting her path.

There is an optimism about the potential of human beings that is tempered with a strong no-nonsense manner and a brisk practicality.

The foundations of our government have to be relearned by every new generation, how it was set up, and what role each individual has in it.

Once a case is on the docket, the parties prepare their written briefs and oral arguments for their Supreme Court appearance.

Justices have often made revealing comments in their letters and memoirs that give insight into the dynamics of conference decision making.

We saw earlier in our discussion of interpretivism and strict constructionism the importance of justices' attitudes towards the Constitution.

Liberal justice Thurgood Marshall, who had once used the Constitution in activist and interpretivist ways to change civil rights laws, pleaded for restraint among his newer and more conservative colleagues who were eager to roll back some of the earlier decisions.

Despite the founders' efforts to make justices immune to politics and the pressures of public opinion by giving them lifetime tenure, political scientists have found that they usually tend to make decisions that are consistent with majority opinion in the United States.

It doesn't mean that justices are reading public opinion polls over breakfast and incorporating their findings into judicial decisions after lunch.

The high success rate of the solicitor general can be attributed to the influence of the executive branch.

The Supreme Court was put under enormous pressure by interest groups.

Interest groups are influential in the process of nomination and confirmation of the justices, they file amicus curiae briefs to try to shape the decisions on the certiorari petitions, and they file an increasingly large number of briefs in support of one or the other side when the case is The NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Washington Legal Foundation are some of the groups that provide funds and lawyers for people who want to reach the Court.

Researchers are unsure if interest group activity has paid off in court victories.

In the case of Citizens United, which was so reviled by Democrats that President Obama criticized it during his State of the Union address in 2010, this can lead to highly partisan decisions.

One scholar who has looked at the disputes among justices over decisions, and who has evaluated the characterization of the Court as "nine scorpions in a bottle," says that the number of disagreements is not noteworthy.

The opinion will be less authoritative if it is written by the least enthusiastic member of the majority.

The same decision can be portrayed in many different ways, with implications for many future cases.

The reasons for the about-face can be found in the dissent or the concurrence for the original decision.

The effects of the Supreme Court's decisions are the last area in which we can see it as a political actor.

These decisions, despite the best intentions of those who adhere to the philosophy of judicial restraint, often amount to the creation of public policies as well as acts of Congress.

The Supreme Court has taken an active role in lawmaking at certain points in its history, according to Chapters 5 and 6 on civil liberties and the struggle for equal rights.

The history of the Supreme Court's policymaking role is the history of the United States, and we cannot possibly recount it here, but a few examples should show that rulings of the Court have had the effect of distributing scarce and valued resources among people.

The actions have altered the distribution of power in American society in ways that some would argue should be done by an elected body.

There have been some surprising twists that keep Court-watchers guessing, but in many ways the Roberts Court promises to be the same as before.

In 2010 the Court ruled five to four that campaign finance legislation could not limit the money spent by corporations on electioneering broadcasts because yet understand the full impact of this case, as we will see in Chapter 14.

In 2012 the Court struck down most of Arizona's immigration law and upheld the constitutionality of President Obama's health care bill, but not on grounds that observers had anticipated.

The Court limited the president's ability to make appointments during congressional recess, struck down overall limits by individuals to campaigns, and ruled in a split decision that family-owned corporations do not have to provide health insurance that covers birth control to employees if it offends the owners' religious beliefs.

Same-sex couples have a constitutional right to get married, and they supported an initiative giving citizens the right to take district re-drawing out of the hands of state legislators and give it to an independent commission.

Although this is not a comprehensive list of Supreme Court cases, it shows that the decisions get right in the thick of determining who gets what and how they get it.

The Court is the guardian of American justice and the Constitution and citizens want to believe that.

Presidents want to create a legacy and build political support with respect to their Supreme Court appointments, and they want to place justices on the Court who reflect their political views and judicial philosophy.

Interest groups that want members on the Court to reflect their views can lobby the Senate before and during the confirmation hearings.

They want a manageable workload and rely on their law clerks to follow the rules of the court.

They want to make significant and respected decisions, which means they have to weigh their own criteria carefully.

The Supreme Court's decisions are shaped by institutional rules and political influences.

The principle of equality before the law is an important component of American political culture.

Citizens are treated differently by the systems based on their race, income level, and the kinds of crimes they commit.

African Americans and whites have different narratives about the criminal justice system because of experience and because of the power of social media.

When law enforcement violations of civil rights are videotaped, posted in real time, and go viral before the official report has been made, the conventional, pro-law enforcement narratives are harder to maintain, although people's perception of the events is still often divided along racial lines.

The country was reminded of that fact when whites and blacks reacted in different ways to the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

80 percent of African Americans said the incident raised important ideas about race in the week after the killing.

Whites are used to seeing the police as a source of safety rather than danger, and often fail to understand what such incidents look like from the other side of the racial divide.

As Ferguson struggled for calm, sympathy for the police officer who shot Brown generated several online efforts to raise funds for him and his family.

The betrayal of the public trust by law enforcement officers who believe that black men are more dangerous than whites was one of the reasons why the Brown murder was not an exception.

Colin Kapernick, a quarterback for the San Francisco 49er, knelt during the national anthem in 2016 to protest police violence.

The owners of the National Football League decided to fine players who took a knee during the anthem after President Trump weighed in.

Justice Sheindlin called for reforms and a federal monitor to oversee them, but stopped short of ending the practice entirely.

Half of the people who were convicted of felonies in the United States were enthusiastic about their assignments.

The wealthy can afford crackerjack lawyers who can use the "defense lawyer's bag of tricks for sowing doubts, casting aspersions, and coaching witnesses," but "if you are not a person of means, if you cannot afford to engage the elite defense-lawyer industry--and Protestors took to the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, to express their anger over what they saw as a pattern of unfair treatment by the police.

There is no guarantee that low-income defendants will get legal assistance in civil cases, despite the Supreme Court ruling.

The LSC helps people with legal problems such as housing, employment, family issues, finances, and immigration.

The civil justice system ends up discriminating because people of color and women are more likely to be poor than are white men.

Since Michael Brown's murder, the Black Lives counternarrative about the justice system in the United States that has helped to bring the experience of African Americans home to whites in a new way.

Hillary Clinton invited the mothers of young black men slain by police to the Democratic National Convention in 2016 in order to put the public spotlight on that narrative.

The mothers occasionally joined her on the campaign trail, as they took the stage to chants of "Black Lives Matter".

The possibility of being caught without an elected leader at a critical time has been put into a broader perspective by the national crisis that began with the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

Justice Stevens pointed out at the time that the long-term consequences of people's attitudes toward the Court were at risk.

The justices, speaking around the country, tried to contain the damage and reassured Americans that the decision was not made on political or ideological grounds.

But fifteen years later, retired Justice O'Connor expressed some regrets, not about the ruling itself or her vote in it, but about the Court's decision to get involved at all.

Justice Scalia told an audience that if you can't disagree without hating each other, you better find another profession.

The members of the Supreme Court are used to disagreeing over important issues and probably handle the level of conflict more easily than the Americans who look up to them as diviners of truth and right.

Many observers were surprised that the Court agreed to hear the case in the first place, assuming that the justices would have sent it back to Florida.

The majority of the Court saw something else at stake that led them to set aside their strong beliefs in states' rights and to run the risk that they might be seen as more Machiavelli than King Solomon, according to some observers.

They thought it was better to act immediately rather than wait until a circus-like atmosphere had rendered impossible the most important decision a voting public can make.

Politicians, partisans, and historians will continue to debate for years about whether they were right in doing so, and whether the stakes justified the risks they took.

In the wake of the Supreme Court's five-to-four decision, Chief Justice John Roberts was praised by liberals and lambasted by conservatives.

At the end of his first term as Chief Justice, John Roberts told me that he was determined to place the bipartisan legitimacy of the Court above his own ideological agenda.

The public's faith in the Court was hard to maintain due to the tendency of his colleagues to hand down 4-3 decisions that were predictable in party lines.

Roberts wants his colleagues to avoid party line votes in divisive cases.

Roberts said he would follow in the footsteps of his judicial hero, John Marshall, who sometimes engaged in legal "twistifications," in order to achieve results that would strengthen the institutional legitimacy of the Court.

Marshall would have been proud of the twistification Roberts produced in the health care case.

He joined the four liberals in holding that the individual mandate was justified by Congress's taxing power, even though he also joined the four conservatives in holding that the mandate was not justified by Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce.

Roberts deserves praise from both liberals and Americans who believe that it's important for the Court to stand for something bigger than politics.

When he first took office, Roberts said he would place the bipartisan legitimacy of the Court above his own ideological agenda.

Even though he laid the groundwork for limiting congressional power in the future, the left and right commentators praised his political genius in handing the president the victory he sought.

Conservatives were foolish to worry that Roberts could be intimidated by President Obama and other liberals who warned that a Republican-Democratic vote striking down health care would represent a failure of Roberts's bipartisan vision.

Anyone who cared enough about his legacy to discuss it at the beginning of his tenure is far too savvy to be swayed by warnings from the left or right.

Roberts knew that the health care decision would be the defining moment of his early tenure, and he rose to the occasion by voting to uphold the mandate after the initial decisions were drafted.

Roberts has not reinvented himself as a liberal, but he has increased the political capital that will allow him to continue to move the Court in a conservative direction.

Marshall was able to expand judicial power in the future by refusing to confront Jefferson over a question of executive privilege.

Roberts's career defining choice in the health care case calls to mind the bipartisan ambitions of both John Marshall and Barack Obama.

Like Roberts, Obama came to Washington as a Harvard educated lawyer who was strongly identified with one side of the political spectrum but believed in the virtues of bipartisanship.

The version of the health care mandate that Obama endorsed had the imprimatur of conservatives such as Romney and the Heritage Foundation.

Obama wassailed on both his left and right flanks by people who saw moderation as apostasy.

Roberts now faces similar attacks from the left and right over the health care case for the compromise he forged with the pragmatic liberals.

The justices concluded that the threat of losing Medicaid funding was unconstitutional and could be removed.

Roberts was able to get the liberals to join him in limiting Congressional power because they upheld the mandate.

Bipartisan leadership, which requires compromise, is what both Obama and Roberts did on health care.

The justices in the health care case reached their decisions based on their judicial temperaments.

The romantic libertarian, Anthony Kennedy, was one of the conservatives who was opposed to incursions on liberty regardless of whether they came from the right or left.

Clarence Thomas made it clear in his statement how he wanted to restrict federal power.

Scalia gives us a vision of what both the liberal and conservative wings might have sounded like if Roberts hadn't prevented them from polarizing entirely.

Chief Justice Roberts's opinion about the taxing power was influenced by arguments by liberal scholars who care about constitutional text and history, such as Neil Siegel of Duke Law School.

The majority opinion vindicated Don Verrilli's decision to emphasize the breadth of Congress's taxing power.

Justices have broad discretion to pick and choose among competing legal arguments based on a range of factors, including concerns about text, history, precedent, or institutional legitimacy.

The mark of a successful Chief is the fact that Roberts placed institutional legitimacy front and center.

Faith in the impartiality of judges and the neutrality of the law is a fragile thing.

I tell students that they can't assume that it's all politics when I teach constitutional law.

Roberts gave the country an example of what it means to be a successful Chief Justice with his performance in the health care case.

Statutes, administrative laws, and executive orders are created by Congress, the bureaucracy, and the president.

Congress created a layer of district, state, and federal courts with differing rules of procedure.

It is a powerful institution that is revered by the American public but also political as the other two branches of government.

Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Puerto Rico are part of the First Circuit Court.

Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee are part of the Sixth Circuit Court.

Alaska, Hawaii, California, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington are part of the Ninth Circuit Court.

Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma are part of the Tenth Circuit Court.

The last four presidents have appointed people to the federal courts by race and gender.

The change in the number of Supreme Court justices is explained in a political cartoon.

You will be able to explain the role of public opinion in a democracy after you've read this chapter.

There are ways in which public opinion affects the relationship between citizens and government.

Irish expatriates from all over the world were going to vote on the repeal of Ireland's Eighth Amendment banning abortions.

People were coming home to register their opinions after polls showed the vote would be close.

Less restrictive laws were able to be passed after the Eighth Amendment was overturned.

In a country with a Constitution that reflected the conservative principles of the Catholic Church, public opinion has been shifting faster than the wheels of government could turn.

The people came out in droves to amend the Constitution to allow politicians to pass laws reflecting the shifts.

Irish law requires citizens living around the world to vote in person in order to repeal the Eighth Amendment.

Direct votes on policy are not unusual, but the results can be shocking.

On the morning of June 24, 2016 British citizens woke up to the news that they were leaving the European Union, an economic and political union of twenty-eight European countries that dated in some form back to the days after World War II.

The United Kingdom consists of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, and Gibraltar.

Although Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Gibraltar voted to remain, they were stuck with the result.

The idea of letting the people decide is attractive in a country like the United States.

Californians have become used to being asked for their votes on new state laws through referenda and voter initiatives.

In May of last year, Ohio passed an initiative rejecting partisan gerrymandering.

The question of whether U.S. citizens should be able to vote in a national referendum is one that drives the debate.

As we saw with Ireland and the United Kingdom, many other countries do the same thing with some degree of direct democracy.

In the past few years, voters in several countries have been asked to decide on a number of issues, including the establishment of a tribunal to resolve a border dispute with Croatia, limits to individual landholdings, and the choice of a president.

Gravel proposed in 1995 that the United States join many of the world's nations in adopting a popular vote on policy.

He argued that Americans should support a national initiative he called "Philadelphia II", which would set up procedures for direct popular participation in take place through the ballot box.

When Bill Clinton's team of pollsters openly tested the public on various issues, including his approval ratings, the George W. Bush administration was cagey about the fact that they watched polls at all.

Bush said things like "I really don't worry about polls or focus groups; I do what I think is right."

The collection of individual attitudes and beliefs on one or more issues is called aggregation.

With today's technology, we can keep a constant eye on the pulse of America and know what its citizens are thinking at almost any given time.

Our elected officials are sensitive to the fact that their votes may come back to haunt them when it's time for reelection, even though they are disconnected from popular opinion.

Members of Congress pay attention to public opinion polls and try to give face time in their districts as well.

The degree to which the public's opinion on politics is influenced by our demographic, our circumstances, and the channels through which we get information may surprise us.

A lot of people behave as if public opinion does matter, and thus, to the degree that they measure, record, and react to it, it does become a factor in American politics.

The rise of popular sovereignty and the rejection of aristocracy are part of the story of the American founding.

In recent decades it has almost always followed the vote of the people, even though it was supposed to be a group of enlightened citizens.

In state politics, citizens can vote on policies and even remove officials from office before their terms are up.

Elitists think that citizens are too ignorant, ill-informed, or subject to manipulation to be trusted with major political decisions, but they think that groups of citizens are competent on those issues in which they have a stake.

One view, public-interested citizenship, describes the ideal democratic citizen, who is activated by concern for the common good and recognizes that democracy carries obligations as well as rights.

In this model, a citizen should be knowledgeable about politics, tolerant of differing opinions, and willing to compromise in order to participate in civic activities.

All forms of citizenship are subject to the power inherent in the channels through which we acquire information in the current age.

An inquisitive citizen who reads widely, explores the web, and debates people with whom he or she disagrees is more likely to escape the perils of living in an information bubble and to demonstrate the values of public-interested citizenship.

A citizen who ignores the news altogether or gets it only from sources he or she agrees with is more likely to be focused on less universal, more personal issues.

Public opinion matters in American politics because politicians and media leaders act as though they agree with Key's conclusion.

Recent presidents have had in-house public opinion experts whose polls are used as part of their political strategies.

The media makes huge investments in polls and devotes a lot of coverage to reporting what the public is thinking.

Polls are used to measure public attitudes toward all sorts of things and then are interpreted by the media, who set the narrative about what they mean.

The modern political arena seems to be dominated by public opinion.

John Oliver takes the biting humor he hones at the Daily Show to an entirely new level on Last Week Tonight, which provides thoroughly researched reports that are at onceinformative, creative, interactive, sarcastic, and hilarious.

Thepay channel allows for free sharing of video and other material from the show, increasing its impact on public opinion as it makes the social media rounds.

Pause and review Who, What, How Public opinion is important in theory and practice, in our views about how citizens and politicians should behave.

Over the course of two hundred years, many of the rules have changed as citizens have become more involved in government.

The give and take of democratic politics can be difficult if activist citizens are not tolerant of other's views.

The ideal democratic citizen understands how government works, who the main actors are, and what major principles underlie the operation of the political system.

Less than half of Americans knew that Neil Gorsuch was a justice on the Supreme Court after a scandalous story about McConnell blocking Obama's nominee.

In a democracy, with many people jockeying for position and competing visions of the common good, tolerance for ideas different from one's own and respect for the rights of others provide oil to keep the democratic machinery running smoothly.

The anonymity of channels of communication on the Internet allows people to express inappropriate and racist views without fear of repercussions.

Most Americans support the values of freedom of speech, religion, and political equality.

One study found that only 24 percent of high school graduates earned high scores, compared with 52 percent of college graduates, on a civil liberties scale designed to measure overall support for First Amendment rights.

The basics of the political culture we learned about in and more complex forces that guide us into adopting the more divisive ideologies we studied in the same chapter bring most of us to consensus.

Sharing an essential narrative about the founding of a country and the values that support it and deserve loyalty is important here.

As we learn patriotism and good citizenship, those values are supportive of the political system.

Family, school, and houses of worship all have an interest in turning out well-behaved children with loyalty to country.

Socialization is similar to mediation in that the information we pick up comes through channels that may be controlled by people or organizations with an interest in having us behave in certain ways.

Children begin to develop an emotional response to political celebrations and national symbols once there.

The flag deserves respect, the police are good, and the president is important.

Strong emotional attachment to the political community is one of the important orientations that develops in the preschool years.

Children watching fireworks at Independence Day can easily see that being American is special.

Children tend to choose the same political party as their parents, and schools that emphasize stirring narratives about national origins, founding heroes, and patriotism are an important agent of political learning.

When there were fewer television stations, most children watched the same cartoons, many of which reinforced patriotic themes, and even today they watch videos and play video games that do the same things.

These tendencies can be traced in part to the way people select themselves into groups, but they are reinforced by social contacts and the social media connections that allow us to build on and participate in the stories about who we are.

The process of talking, working, and worshiping together leads people to see the world in the same way.

We move from consensus on the basics of American political culture to more divisive beliefs.

The positive feelings toward government we build in our early years are disrupted by divisive beliefs.

The post-New Deal philosophy that there are public solutions to our problems means that when government acts there will be winners and losers.

Conflict among different groups in society can affect levels of trust in the government.

In the days after 9/11, our trust in the government waned, but we did so because we believed that we were under threat, and because of the divisions in our opinions.

For African American children, it is not always clear that the police are their friends or that the system deserves their loyalty.

When we compare the answers to a question about spending to improve the condition of blacks, the responses are quite different.

We can see that respondents would support a community bill to ban discrimination in housing.

Whites are more likely to side with the owner's right to sell a house than African Americans are.

The child of a White House staffer was allowed to pat his head and confirm that his hair was the same as the president's.

The future prospects of children who have grown up with an African American president may be different than those who came before them.

Blacks and whites have different political attitudes because of the discrimination experienced by African Americans.

Blacks are more likely to see higher levels of discrimination in the criminal justice system, in education, and in the job market.

When whites' income and other status indicators rise, they become more conservative and Republican until they achieve advanced degrees, when they tend to become Democrats.

The increasing number of black conservatives shows that assumptions about African Americans and the Democratic Party are not always correct.

This small but emerging pattern is exemplified by Condoleezza Rice, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, former head of the Republican National Committee Michael Steele, and Herman Cain, who briefly led in the polls for the Republican presidential nomination.

Whites are the most conservative on the death penalty, with almost three-quarters favoring capital punishment, compared to half of African Americans and Latinos.

Latino's oppose abortion and don't favor a reduction in the number of immigrants allowed into the country.

The differences in the pattern make sense in the context of America's racial and ethnic mix.

Women who gained more education and entered the workforce increased their political participation.

Since 2006 women have voted at a slightly higher rate than men, but their attitudes on issues differ.

There is a tendency for men and women to evaluate political figures differently.

In many localities, the "never marrieds" are an important group that politicians must consider in deciding which issues to support.

The finding of age differences in political engagement is an important example.

Middle-age and older citizens tend to be more active in politics, voting more often, and writing letters to public officials.

It seems that acting out one's political role may be part of the process of "settling down", such as marrying, having children, and establishing a career.

The exception was mitigated by the unusual response of young people to Barack Obama's candidacy for president.

The Obama candidacy brought record numbers of young people to the polls, and at the same time created one of the sharpest age-vote relationships we have seen, with younger voters supporting Obama in overwhelming numbers.

Political generations are groups of citizens who have been shaped by particular events in their youth, and whose shared experience continues to identify them throughout their lives.

Growing up in the years after 9/11 can give a generation a set of shared values as surely as having grown up during the civil rights movement of the sixties, the Vietnam War, World War II, or the Great Depression.

Young people do not fit the mold of their elders and are more likely to be cynical about the media than their parents were.

The younger generation favors legalization of marijuana, environmental protection, and LGBTQ rights more than their elders do.

The division in American public opinion can be described in ideological or partisan terms.

For many Americans today, liberalism is a preference for faith in government action to bring about equitable outcomes and social tolerance, while conservatism is a preference for limited government and traditional social values.

A lot of policy controversies in American politics are discussed in conservative terms.

Research shows that we resolve uncertainty about new policies to be consistent with our partisanship.

A poll at the end of Ronald Reagan's second term asked Americans if inflation and unemployment had gotten better or worse.

Because, as we have noted throughout this book, we are living in an age of hyperpartisanship, with party elites and candidates increasingly divided, citizens have found it easier to sort themselves into one party or the other, especially as we are able to separate not just our residences and social lives As we suggested in our discussion of the ideal democratic citizen, a number of political orientations change as a person gets more education.

"39 Democratic enlightenment refers to a citizen's ability to hold democratic beliefs, including the idea that politics is about compromise and that sometimes the needs of the whole community will conflict with and override one's individual preferences."

Better educated citizens are more likely to be informed about politics, to be tolerant and committed to democratic principles, and to vote and to participate in all levels of the political attributes of the idealized active democratic citizen than are those who do not.

Those in the lowest income brackets are less likely to agree with the assessment that too much is being spent on welfare or that they are paying too much in taxes.

There are a lot of political issues that touch on deep moral conviction or values.

One's view of what is morally right is the motivation for action or opinion formation in these cases.

Our views of morality and social issues are often based on our differing religious beliefs and values.

Protestants, Catholics, and Jews had different political preferences after the New Deal realignment.

Specific religious affiliations may not be as important for understanding citizen opinions on social issues.

Those who adhere to traditional religious beliefs and practices, such as frequent churchgoers, regular Bible readers, and those who pray frequently, tend to take conservative positions on an array of social issues.

The central role of race and its plantation past gave rise to different patterns of public opinion compared to the non-southern states.

City dwellers are more Democratic in their party affiliations and voting and are more liberal in their ideology and stance on most issues, from regulation of business to opposing capital punishment and favoring more environmental regulation.

Race and ethnicity, gender, and age are some of the demographic characteristics that contribute to less consensual values.

The middle of the "independent" and "moderate" categories for party identification and ideology are included in the calculations.

The truth is that most social scientists and political pollsters conduct public opinion surveys according to the highest standards of scientific accuracy, and their results are for the most part reliable.

In this section, we look at how we can gauge what the public thinks about issues important to our civic and political lives.

Even though you have never conducted an actual poll on the beliefs of your friends and family, you know what they think about a lot of issues.

By talking with them, we can get a sense of their ideas and preferences, and most people are not shy about sharing their views on their social media networks.

We tend to hang around, communicate with, and listen to people who share our views and that can reinforce the idea that everyone in the world thinks the same.

The interactions give them a sense of what matters to people and how they are reacting to news events.

Direct contact with people puts politicians in touch with concerns that could be missed by the most scientifically designed public opinion poll.

The issues of national news that are on the minds of national politicians or pollsters might be the focus of the poll, but citizens might be more concerned about the building of a dam upriver from their city or about teacher layoffs in their school district.

A truly representative sample is one that does not overrepresent any part of the population and whose responses can be generalized to the whole.

When a sample is not chosen scientifically and has too many people in it from one part of the population, we say it has a problem of to judge public opinion from what they hear among their supporters and friendly interest groups.

The name for these polls comes from the fact that a straw is thrown up into the air to indicate how wind is blowing.

It's not likely that similar goofs will happen with polls all the way up to Election Day.

Political polls are just a small part of the marketing business, which spends a lot of money trying to gauge what people want and are willing to buy.

Many local governments conduct surveys to find out what their citizens want and how satisfied they are with municipal services.

It might seem counterintuitive, but a sample of only a few hundred people can be used to represent the entire United States with more than 300 million residents.

A poll's reliability is indicated by its sampling error, which is a number that tells within what range the actual opinion of the whole population would fall.

Sampling bias is not a problem that plagues modern pollsters, but there is a way it can sneak in through the back door.

The reasons for this drop include hostility to telemarketers, the increasing use of caller ID, and the fact that people are working more, and have less time and inclination to talk to strangers on the phone.

One consequence of the nonresponse problem is that the most reluctant respondents are more likely to be missed in a typical survey than the average population, meaning that a standard survey might yield responses that are slightly more liberal on racial matters than might be the case.

During the analysis of the results, under- or overrepresented groups are compared to their actual numbers in the population.

Studies of differential response rates, which one might think would cause serious sample biases, found that well-constructed telephone polls still provide accurate information on citizens' responses to most questions about politics and issues.

The computers dial the numbers and deliver recorded messages, even "Interacted" by asking questions that are answered by pushing buttons on a touch-tone phone.

It is easy to abuse, especially when combined with push poll methods.Legitimate polling firms also userobo calls and have collected more information on more political subjects than has been available in the past, such as the state-by-state results provided by SurveyUSA.

We don't mean the polls that CNN or others put up asking for volunteers to click in their opinions.

Pollsters create panels of internet users who regularly log in to deliver their opinions.

Proponents argue that the Internet polls match results from traditional telephone interviewing because they do not rely on strict probability samples.

Forbidding autodialing is one of the technologies that can't be used to contact cell phone users.

People are more likely to refuse to answer polls if they are contacted by cell phones.

A 1992 survey reported that over a third of the American public did not believe that the Holocaust had actually happened.

The term Holocaust refers to the killing of millions of Jews in Nazi death camps during World War II.

Good surveys can tell us a lot about public opinion, but they won't produce the final word.

To achieve scientifically valid measures of the knowledge, beliefs, or attitudes of the adult population is the underlying goal.

Most well-funded campaigns begin by taking a sample of the population in a state or district to gather baseline information on how well the candidate is known, what issues people associate with the candidate, and what issues people are concerned about.

The daily samples are too small to allow for reliable generalization, but the groups of interviews averaged over time are extremely helpful.

A sudden change in a tracking poll could mean that the opponent's new ads are doing damage or that interest group endorsements are having an effect.

The average process of the Aggregators helps smooth out individual pollsters' house effects and differences in their assumptions about turnout.

There was a lot of back and forth in the media about what the electorate was likely to look like, with some Republicans arguing that the public polls were "skewed" because there were too many Democrats in the samples.

The polls came close to predicting the popular vote, but Hillary Clinton won it.

Most analysts think that Clinton would win the Electoral College because the models failed to estimate turnout correctly.

The predictions are made on the basis of short questionnaires given to some voters after they cast their votes.

Vote choice, demographic questions, some issue preferences, and evaluations of candidates are the focus of exit polls.

In recent years, media organizations have banded together to share the costs of conducting national exit polls.

As a result of these problems, networks are more cautious in declaring winners without corroborating evidence from the actual vote returns; there were no mistakes in "calling" the states in the 2004 presidential election, although exit poll results led the Kerry campaign to think they had won early in the evening In the days leading up to the 2012 presidential election, public opinion polls generated a lot of controversy.

He nailed the Electoral College vote despite Republicans saying he was shilling for the Democrats.

Nate Silver is a very smart guy, he deals in numbers and mathematical models and predictions all the time.

He was out of college when he developed the PECOTA system, which was used to predict the performance of baseball players.

The Republican Congress passed a law that made online poker illegal, but it was not very effective.

The game was affected by the fact that you can play poker, but you can't deposit money in and out.

Silver said that other analysts didn't have a model that aggregated the existing polling and ran simulations of the various primary and general election races.

Soon Silver's readership soared and he was on cable TV analyzing polls and races, because his predictions were uncannily accurate.

After signing a three-year contract with the New York Times, Silver left to start his own website, fivethirtyeight.com.

He frequently writes about politics and elections, with occasional entries into sports, economics, and popular culture.

I want people to not be intimidated by numbers and statistics, to not just assume that something they hear is true, even if it's from a politician or another writer in the New York Times.

I think patriotism is when you say, "Look, this is where I was born, or I migrated to the United States, this is where my loyalty is."

Only a portion of the media outlet's audience who care enough to call in or click a mouse are shown in the polls.

When CNN asks users to record their views on a current issue, the audience is limited to those who own or have access to computers, those who care enough about the news to be on the CNN site, and those who want to pause.

Another form of pseudo-poll is the poses as a legitimate information-seeking effort but is really a shady campaign trick to change people's attitudes.

Push polls present false or highly negative information and ask respondents to react to it.

The information presented can raise doubts about a candidate and change a voter's opinion about him or her.

Push questions are used on a limited basis by pollsters and campaign strategists to find out how voters might respond to negative information about the candidate or the opposition.

The goal of the "poll" was to plant negative information in the minds of thousands of people.

The target candidate can't rebut the lies or halftruths because push polls frequently pop up the weekend before an election.

Push polls try to call as many voters as they can with little regard to the quality of a legitimate sample.

Legislation against push polling has been introduced in several state legislatures, and the practice has been condemned by the American Association of Political Consultants.

A final category of polls are those conducted by social scientists not so much to gauge and measure public opinion about elections or current events as to deepen our understanding of public attitudes, especially on controversial issues such as race, gender, and civil liberties, where respondents know what the socially acceptable answers to the The survey questions are manipulated in order to get respondents to give more information than they think they are giving.

The study of racial attitudes in which researchers sought to find out if the way a question is framed affects how respondents feel about a particular group is a pioneer example of such work.

Researchers wondered if the mention of affirmative action would change people's attitudes towards African Americans.

The mere mention of affirmative action excited more negative responses toward blacks in the second group, 66 which helped researchers to understand the complex sets of issues that lie behind racial attitudes in American public opinion and told them something about the impact of framing on racial attitudes.

In 2016 they had Hillary Clinton's popular victory margin within one point, although several of the states were slightly off.

We wouldn't expect them to be correct, given the known levels of sampling error and the fact that 15 percent of voters claim to remain undecided up to the last minute.

Politicians and their staffs, the media, and professional polling organizations are all interested in measuring and tracking public opinion.

To build their markets, they create and publish polls that encourage their audiences to vote.

Politicians may act as if citizens are informed and attentive, but we have seen ample evidence that only a small percentage of Americans live up to our model of good citizenship, and those who do often belong to the well-educated, the well-off, and the older portions of the population.

In October 2015, social media was buzzing over a CNN poll that showed two-thirds of Democratic voters said that they had voted for Hillary Clinton.

In order to come up with a better prediction of the election result, a polling organization will weight responses according to the likelihood that the person will actually vote.

If the survey claims to have detected change over time, be sure to use the same questions.

Responses on obscure or technical topics are less reliable because respondents rarely admit that they don't know how to answer a question.

The internet has long been fertile ground for conspiracy theories, but fake news websites have given these ideas credibility and helped them to spread quickly with real-world consequences.

The man who fired a rifle at a Washington, D.C. pizzeria was arrested in December.

He read that the restaurant was a front for a child sex-slavery ring with links to Hillary Clinton.

Many of the evaluations we make of people, places, and things in our lives are made on the fly.

We can only absorb a small portion of the information, and even then it is difficult to understand it and make sense of it.

Most of us don't research all the scientific data and technical specifications when we buy a computer or car.

Technology allows us to gather information from multiple experts, and we get others' opinions online, from those we follow on social media, and from comments and reviews made by others.

Throughout the book, we have talked about how technology can be used to build and spread narratives that compete with the powerful.

With this status and opportunity comes responsibility, to be sure that the stories you create and pass on are correct and thought out.

Even though there are a few confused voters in the electorate, they tend to cancel each other out in the larger scheme of things.

In a democracy where the people's will is supposed to weigh heavily with our elected officials, we have uncovered some conflicting evidence.

The United States has two traditions of citizenship that are more political and self-interested than the ideal democratic citizen.

Some of the more apolitical and self-interested citizens can cast intelligent votes and have their views represented in public policy with the help of some mechanisms.

If the people the majority choose can make it through the institutional barriers to power, then responsiveness of policies to public preferences is in good working order.

Give examples of how public opinion affects the relationship between citizens and government.

In this chapter, we argue that public opinion is important in policymaking and that politicians respond to it in a variety of ways.

It would be difficult to point the finger at those in Washington for bad laws.

While policies like the two mentioned threaten the jobs of politicians, they also carry consequences that may or may not be very good for the nation as a whole.

The Irish referenda show how voters can free politicians to pass laws in line with changing times and values, while the experience of the people who voted to leave the United Kingdom shows that they don't want to live with it.

The public might suffer if it is left to its own mercy on questions of policy it does not understand.

It brings government closer to the people and wreaks havoc with the system of checks and balances.

The House and the Senate were supposed to check popular opinion, as well as the other two branches of government.

Home computer voting or trips to the ballot box do not allow for such a key without the moderation of debate and discussion that can lead to majority tyranny.

In other countries, national referenda are used to diffuse the political consequences of unpopular decisions.

Direct democracy at the national level would have a major impact on American politics, but it's not clear who will win and who will lose.

The quality of American democracy and the protections available to minorities may be damaged in the long run, because the American people believe they would enjoy the power and various groups are confident they would profit.

In the United States, public opinion seems to have less to do with the issues and more to do with what the people you identify with think.

We talked about how identity affects opinion, but just as partisanship can place party over country, public opinion can place identity over issues, creating the state of tribalism that this author describes.

In June, the valedictorian at Bell County High School in southeastern Kentucky gave a graduation speech filled with inspiring quotes that he found on the internet.

In this conservative part of the country, one line drew wild applause from the crowd.

Americans think of a land where one ethnic or religious group will always be hated by another.

As the indigenous people of many parts of the world, including the Americas, have long done, tribalism refers to the organization of people along lines of common ancestry or joint identity for the purpose of exercising political power.

Tribalism, a political structure that could never hope to address the challenges of large states, came to be seen as crude and antiquated as new forms of governance appeared.

In the modern era, the word is used almost exclusively to suggest an irrational loyalty to your people.

The impulse to belong to a clan is deeply human, however, and new tribes continue to form, organized not around ancestry but along fuzzier lines of ideology or demography.

They rule over separate territories, listen to different oracles, uphold distinct values, and dismiss conflicting information as fake news.

The working class, baby boomers, city dwellers, and rural people can all be grouped into political tribes.

The Club for Growth ran a TV ad in Iowa featuring an elderly white couple being asked about Howard Dean's tax proposal, when he was the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for the presidency.

Bush's tax cuts provoked a rant against a group of people, who were characterized almost entirely through their lifestyle and consumer choices, because they were not given a coherent opinion on how much tax should reasonably be withholding.

Americans pride themselves on having a "melting pot" model of immigration, in which each new group is thrown into the mix, contributing to the overall sustenance of the nation.

For most of the country's history, one tribe has held power, deciding who was allowed to settle the land and who could be dispossessed, who was free and who was enslaved, who had the right to vote and who did not.

The debate about which tribe holds power became explicit rather than implicit when other groups began to demand justice and recognition.

During the civil rights struggles, anti-war protests and cultural clashes of the 1960s, the use of the word "tribalism" in print increased significantly, reaching a peak in 1972, when Richard Nixon won a second term.

The era was characterized by turmoil both abroad and here in the United States, where tribes rebelled against one another in nearly every public arena.

After Nixon's resignation and the end of the Vietnam War, complaints about tribalism rose again in the 1990s.

Bill Clinton moved the Democratic Party to the right by deregulating banks, cutting welfare programs and building a border wall.

Conservatives attacked Clinton as a symbol of a lost and immoral society while liberals minimized his offenses when he had an affair with Monica Lewinsky.

In the 20 years since, the two tribes have switched sides, with liberals against Donald Trump and conservatives supporting him.

A way of making the most consequential debate seem like a mere spat between loyalists on either side is how complaints about tribalism can be politically expedient.

It is easier to escape the moral implications of taking an asylum-seeking child from his or her mother and incarcerating them hundreds of miles apart by reducing every question to tribalist point- scoring.

Civil disobedience and mass protests defeated Jim Crow laws.

The National Guard was used to implement the Supreme Court decision to desegregate schools.

It is not a good idea to expect people to be broken apart by police violence, immigration raids, travel bans or anti-L.G.B.T.

"Maybe we pushed too far," Barack Obama is quoted as saying in a new memoir by Benjamin Rhodes, one of his closest aides.

She makes an explicitly political argument that tribalism is on the rise as groups challenge the all-powerful position of white, western male-dominated culture.

Throughout American history, the role of public opinion in politics has been debated.

Job security can be found by responding to immediate public desires or by skillfully predicting future requests.

The media make large investments in polls, sometimes covering public attitudes on a candidate or an issue as a story in itself.

The ideal democratic citizen votes consistently and demonstrates political knowledge.

The transfer of fundamental democratic values from one generation to the next creates a citizenry that largely agrees with the rules of the game and accepts the outcomes of the national political process as legitimate.

The opinions are affected by demographic characteristics such as race, gender, and age, political ideology, and other factors.

The idea that public opinion plays a large role in government policy is supported by a lot of evidence.

Many citizens use rational information to make their voting decisions, even if they seem political and disinterested.

One of the lowest voter turnouts in the world can be found in the United States.

The legalization of marijuana, legal marriage for gays and lesbians, and the enforcement of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts are supported by a higher percentage of people between the ages of 18 and 30.

Half of people over the age of 65 agree that a woman should always be allowed to get an abortion.

It should be easier to get a concealed gun carry permit according to 40 percent of all age groups.

Of those who make less than twenty-five thousand dollars a year, 33 percent agree that the government spends too much on welfare, and 45 percent agree that the government should provide housing for people who can't afford it.

46 percent of those who make between twenty-five thousand and fifty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars a year agree that the government spends too much on welfare, and 32 percent agree that the government should provide housing for those who can't afford it.

54 percent of those who make between sixty thousand and one hundred and nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars a year agree that the government spends too much on welfare, and 14 percent agree that the government should provide housing for those who can't afford it.

41 percent of people who make more than one hundred and ten thousand dollars a year agree that the government spends too much on welfare, and 18 percent agree that the government should provide housing for people who can't afford it.

Andrew Jackson had a lead over John Quincy Adams and two others in the first straw poll.

Jackson failed to get a majority in the Electoral College despite winning the popular vote.

The 2 million people who responded to the poll indicated that the Republican was going to win the presidency.

Opinion researchers used sampling, survey techniques, and statistical methods to dig into consumers' minds.

George Gallup used probability theory to generalize from a small sample and call the election for Franklin Roosevelt.

Cell phone-only households, call screening, low response rates, the rise of Internet polling, and online panels are among the new considerations.

Romney's pollsters assumed that polls showing an Obama lead must be wrong and altered their polls turnout model because they were convinced that turnout would not match two thousand and eight.

Donald Trump tried to change the narrative by telling his base that the polls were rigged, a claim that more than two-thirds of them believed.

The second version states that a proposal has been made that would allow parents to send their children to any public, private, or church-related school they choose.

All or part of the tuition would be paid by the government for parents who choose non-public schools.