Legal scholarship highlight: The Supreme Court, the media and public opinion

Katerina Linos writes for SCOTUSblog, Feb. 24, 2017

We found that the Supreme Court can shift Americans’ views – and did in fact significantly increase the popularity of the individual mandate. This effect, however, is driven by one-sided media coverage – by a choice media outlets often make to treat Supreme Court decisions with far more deference than they treat presidential and congressional choices. Given sufficient media coverage for a particular court case, this choice on the part of the media means the court does have the ability to lead public opinion.