Actions, Factions, and Interactions: Newsworthy Influences on Supreme Court Coverage*

Actions, Factions, and Interactions:Newsworthy Influences on SupremeCourt Coverage∗

Tyler Johnson, The University of Oklahoma

Erica Socker, Texas A&M University

Objectives. We test whether Supreme Court media coverage (in terms of both overallvolume and specific frames) is driven by Court actions, by factional battles on theCourt, by the Court’s interaction with other governmental actors, or by all three.Methods. We link elements of the Spaeth Supreme Court Database and real-worldSupreme Court and political events to Associated Press media coverage of the judicialbranch over a nearly three-decade span. Content analysis of the media coverage isperformed and empirical relationships between decisions, events, and coverage areanalyzed using error correction modeling. Results. We find that overall coverage ofthe Court is driven by the ideological nature of decisions rendered and by judicialretirements. Legal coverage of the Court is driven by issues of constitutionality.Political coverage of the Court is driven by majority size and judicial retirements.Conclusions. The findings speak to the newsworthiness of Court action, factionalbattles on the Court, and moments where the Court interacts with outsiders. Elementsof all three shapes the types of stories journalists tell and the ways in which said storiesare told.

If Americans are to ever grasp the nature and output of the federal judicialsystem, sustained media coverage is vital, especially given the known lack oftransparency on the part of the Court itself and the minimal existing levelsof knowledge on the part of the public concerning what the Court does andhow it impacts daily life (Slotnick, 1991; Slotnick and Segal, 1998). Whileattorneys, judges, law enforcement, and lawmakers pay attention to what theCourt is saying, most of the general public is reliant on newspapers, television,and the Internet for information on what the Court is hearing and why itmatters (Berkson, 1978; Graber, 2010). Despite the centrality of the mediain the relationship between the Court and the public, we know very littleabout what exactly makes up the media’s output on the Supreme Court.Much of what we know about coverage of the Supreme Court is driven bya focus on specific cases (Caldeira, 1987; Clawson, Strine, and Waltenburg,2003; Haider-Markel, Allen, and Johansen, 2006) or examines how media

∗Direct correspondence to Tyler Johnson, Department of Political Science, The University ofOklahoma, 455 W. Lindsey, Room 215 DAHT, Norman, OK 73019 〈[email protected]〉.Tyler Johnson shall share all data and coding for replication purposes.

SOCIAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY, Volume 93, Number 2, June 2012C© 2012 by the Southwestern Social Science AssociationDOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6237.2012.00842.x

Actions, Factions, and Interactions 435

shapes opinion, be it of the job the Court is doing or of the legitimacy of itsdecisions (Baird and Gangl, 2006; Franklin and Kosaki, 1995; Hoekstra, 2000;Mondak, 1994; Mondak and Smithey, 1997; Nicholson and Howard, 2003;Patterson and Caldeira, 1990). This literature has taught us many lessonsabout how what newspaper and television sources choose to cover (i.e., thecontent) drives both individual attitudes and aggregate opinion, but what ithas yet to do is explain content itself. Is content driven by what the Court doeson a day-to-day basis? Is it driven by judicial outcomes? Is it driven by events?Or is it driven by systemic factors related to the Court’s place in governmentand the pressures exerted on the judiciary by legislative and executive actorsand situations?

We argue here that coverage of the Court is driven by what the media deemnewsworthy about decisions themselves, by the relationships between justiceson the Court, and by Court interactions with other branches of government.What the media deem newsworthy, however, might also be shaped by theexisting relationship (or lack thereof ) between the Court and the citizenry.Given the lack of knowledge about the Court that exists, the lack of interest inthe Court, and the inability of many to understand how the Court is relevantto everyday life (Delli Carpini and Keeter, 1996; Hibbing and Theiss-Morse,1995), we expect the media to cover the Court in ways that will be more easilyunderstood by the general public. As scholars like Gamson and Modigliani(1987), Patterson (1993), and Price, Nir, and Cappella (2005) have described,the media are consistently seeking to place coverage of political activity in acontext that is easily understandable by citizens, allowing readers and viewersto make sense of new information by using old information. As such, we seethe media rely on repeating frames of coverage over time. We expect thatcoverage of the Court will be driven by predictors that allow individuals touse knowledge of other branches of government to make sense of what theCourt is doing and why it matters. This means that Court coverage mightbe shaped in terms of how much the Court is working, who wins and loses(ideologically) at the Court, how justices on the Court align, how decisionsmight affect or upset existing legal and political situations, and how changesin the Court might leave a lasting legacy constitutionally. We also argue thatactivity in the other branches of government (electorally and ideologically)might bleed into Court coverage itself. In sum, we expect that when theCourt acts, when factions on the Court are revealed or quelled, and when thejudicial branch interacts or is drawn into interaction with outsiders, the media(in terms of both overall volume of coverage and specific types of coverage)react.

We proceed in the following manner. After a discussion of the existingliterature on media coverage of the Supreme Court, we describe how variablescapturing Court action, faction, and interaction shape overall coverage of theCourt itself. We then discuss these variables in the context of two specific typesof frames of coverage employed by the media: legal coverage and politicalcoverage. Through a series of error correction models, we find that both

436 Social Science Quarterly

variables related to the work the Court undertakes, the ideology and unanimityof judicial decision making, and executive and legislative branch relationshipswith the Court are linked to the rise and fall of media attention and framingof Court activity over a 28-year period from 1979 to 2006.

What Do We Know About Court Coverage?

Many of the lessons learned about media coverage of the Supreme Court arecouched in critiques of the quality of said coverage. Scholars have describedcoverage as “not up to par” (Sobel, 1970) and “limited” (Katsh, 1983). Someof the faults of media coverage of the Court are placed squarely on the Courtitself (and the processes the Court undertakes in accepting, hearing, anddeciding on cases). The calendar of the Court, it is argued, forces the media topick and choose what should be covered because when decisions are releasedin clusters, there is not enough television time or column space to devoteto the Court (Katsh, 1983; Sobel, 1970). Others feel that the Court is notas equipped (perhaps purposefully so, in order to maintain austerity) to dealwith the media in the way that members of Congress or the White House are.The Court lacks a public relations program and does not strive for publicityof decisions or justices (Newland, 1964). Hand in hand with this, justicesthemselves are not eager to open themselves up (O’Brien, 1983); some pursuerelationships with the press while others recede from the spotlight (Davis,1994b). In addition, the Court acts secretively, not letting the public knowwhat it will say and when it will say it in advance (O’Brien, 1983; Slotnick,1991). When the Court does offer decisions, it often does so in languagethat is not easily decipherable by journalists, let alone the bulk of Americancitizens (Slotnick, 1991). These factors, in total, might make the media’s jobin covering the Court a difficult one.

Not all the blame when it comes to coverage of the Court can be laid at thefeet of the Court itself. Scholars have also blamed the media for not adaptingtheir reporting styles to the nuances of Court business. The media, focused onspeed, simplicity, and accuracy, often avoid grappling with decisions (Sobel,1970) in favor of examining litigant, political, or local reaction (Newland,1964). Often times, journalists covering the Court are not fully equipped tounderstand what the Court is saying (Sobel, 1970); in essence, the reportersmight not know the law and the legal system well enough to understand thedecisions and the implications of Court action. Others, like Larson (1985),have argued that the media’s lack of comprehensive coverage is a choice moreso than a result of timetables and adaptation to Court behavior; as she pointsout in her analysis of New York Times coverage of racial discrimination casesheard at the Court across the 1960s and 1970s, 90 percent of articles on thetopic paid close attention to the legal issues at hand, the implications, and thereasoning behind the opinions written by justices. It appears that the media


can grapple with the legal foundation and output of Court activity, but it doesso inconsistently.

Scholars who have delved into coverage of the content of Court decisionshave done so over short periods of time (or in a way that focuses on coverageof specific cases or types of cases), but their findings do offer important lessonsfor those interested in determining how overall coverage might wax and wane.Katsh (1983) finds that about one in five Court decisions gets covered bytelevision networks, but only one in 10 gets extended coverage and analysis.If multiple decisions come out in one day, Slotnick (1991) notes that themedia are especially likely to highlight what they think is the major decisionof the day. In terms of what types of cases get covered, Katsh (1983) notesthat individual rights cases are much more likely to be discussed in the mediathan cases involving corporations or business issues; of all the individual rightsissues the Court addresses, the media are most interested in abortion, freepress, free speech, and freedom of religion issues. The media make effortsto determine what is newsworthy, which issues will attract attention fromviewers or readers (Slotnick, 1991; Slotnick and Segal, 1998). Interestingly,the media’s definition of newsworthiness does not correspond neatly with thelegal community’s definition of importance; as Katsh (1983) argues, cases thatthe legal community (i.e., based on rankings by entities such as the HarvardLaw Review) deems influential do not always get picked up by televisionnewscasts.

We also know that increased interest in the nominations process on thepart of the mass media has potentially changed the face of coverage of theCourt. Stories specifically on nominees themselves increased from the late1960s to the late 1980s (Davis, 1994a), although there is some questionas to whether this change in volume is driven by interest in the process ofnomination and confirming or by the nature of the nominees themselves andthe increased politicization of the nominations process (Davis, 2005). Giventhe duels over the Bork nomination and the failed Ginsburg trial balloon of1987, some have argued that coverage may be driven by motivated politiciansin the White House and Congress, by interest groups seeking to wield power,or by the unique circumstances of a handful of nomination battles. Nomineesare increasingly subjected to media investigation into public records, politicalideologies, and private lives (Davis, 1994b). Not every nominee is put througha media maelstrom, however; as Comiskey (1999) notes, highly qualified,well-regarded, acceptable across party lines nominees like John Paul Stevensand Stephen Breyer did not face the spotlight like some other nomineeshave over the past few decades. Nominations coverage may also be driven bychanges in the media landscape and changes in the nomination landscape. AsComiskey (1999) argues, media expansion, media aggressiveness, expandingtime intervals between retirement announcements and confirmation hearings,and greater realization on the part of the public and politicians alike as to theimportance of selecting a nominee (given life terms and the weight of theissues the Court deals with on a yearly basis) might be driving changes in


Court coverage as well. Nominations coverage has been widely criticized; asCarter (1994) claims, media has become more focused on behavior within andaround hearings and less focused on substantive discussion of implications ofpotential justices on law (echoing broader critiques of the nature of coverage).Since justices serve for life, the media might see such battles through the lens oftheir lasting ramifications and effect on the political stage rather than throughthe lens of legal decision making.

What About the Court Might Be Newsworthy?

We know, thanks to the previously discussed qualitative inquiries into therelationship between the Court and the media already described here, thatcoverage of the Court is hamstrung possibly thanks to the nature of the Courtand the nature of journalists. Still, the Supreme Court does receive mediaattention. The “when?” and “why?” of this media attention is far less under-stood. According to some examinations of how the Supreme Court is covereddiscussed earlier, at the core of the decision-making processes journalists un-dertake when it comes to the Court lies the concept of “newsworthiness.” Thisconcept is somewhat amorphous, however: one person’s definition of what isimportant might be another’s definition of what is irrelevant. Still, given thatwe know that the media do not cover much of what the Court does, we canattempt to determine what might increase or decrease that minimal amountof coverage. In essence, we ask (and answer) the following: What exactly aboutthe Court might be newsworthy? We argue that there are three broad factorsthat shape when the media cover the Court: actions, factions, and interactions.

First, we argue that actions taken by the Court will shape levels of cover-age. Scholars explaining presidential and congressional approval (e.g., Durr,Gilmour, and Wolbrecht, 1997; Gronke and Newman, 2003) have illustratedhow tangible actions potentially drive opinion. However, most of these actionsthat matter are actions that the bulk of Americans do not experience person-ally. The media step into this chasm between politician and citizen, serving asan informational conduit between institutional actions and the general publicand delivering information about what is taking place in government. Weknow though that the media cannot cover everything and therefore must pickand choose what to report. We know that not every piece of legislation flow-ing through Congress receives coverage, nor does every hearing or vote. Thepresident is hyperscrutinized by the media, but the rest of the executive branchand bureaucracy often goes less noticed. Similarly, we should expect the Courtto receive coverage on only a fraction of its workload. The above-mentionedscholars have noted how both the volume of the everyday workload of thosein office as well as rare actions that change the status quo of governing seemto be the actions that spur attention from journalists.

We also argue that factionalism on the Court will shape coverage. This beliefis based on the idea that Americans are interested in how decisions are made


just as much as they are in what the decisions are. As Hibbing and Theiss-Morse (2002) illustrate, individuals care about outcomes, but more so aboutthe process that it took to reach those outcomes than the particular policyintended to bring about said outcomes. If journalists are attempting to findwhat it is about the Court that will draw the eyes and ears of individuals, theywill search for what it is about the Court that best represents the process ofcoming to decisions rendered. The Court, through its secretive way of comingto conclusions, obstructs some of the transparency of the legal processes atwork. Additionally, the decisions themselves are often times too technical forAmericans to read into if in search of process. Describing the Court in termsof process can be accomplished, however, by looking at unity or conflict inoutcomes (what was the margin of the decision? which justices aligned withwhich other justices?). It might also be accomplished by portraying the Courtin terms of processes that exist in other branches (i.e., the conflict betweenactors and between ideologies such as liberalism and conservatism). Thesetypes of factors might offer insight into the process of turning cases heard (orcases that fail to gain cert) into outcomes. The idea that Court factionalismmight spur coverage makes sense given discussions in other literatures aboutjournalistic biases toward covering drama, conflict, or scandal when pickingand choosing which individuals and events deserve attention (Arnold, 2004;Bennett, 2011; Graber, 2010).

Finally, we argue that interactions between the Court and other branchesof government will shape levels of coverage. We know that the connectionbetween Americans and the Supreme Court is tenuous at best. We live in aworld in which individual knowledge of how the Court works or who sitson the Court is minimal (Delli Carpini and Keeter, 1996). We also live ina world in which most Americans fail to grasp the reach of the SupremeCourt or how what the Court does might matter in their lives (Hibbing andTheiss-Morse, 1995). This ignorance on the part of many makes the job ofthe media difficult when it comes to telling the story of what the Court hasdone. We know though that the media attempt to tell stories by couchingnew information in terms of widely held existing information (Patterson,1993; Price and Tewksbury, 1997). This makes reporting more accessible tothe average individual. One way the media might do this when it comesto the Supreme Court is to report on what the Court is doing in terms ofhow it relates to what other more well-known (and perhaps more relevant inthe eyes of many Americans) parts of government are doing. In essence, itmay become easier to understand a story on the Supreme Court if the storyon the Court talks about the Court interacting with the president or withCongress. As such, moments at which the Court interacts with other branches(or governing situations in which the branches are forced to interact more thanusual) should be moments during which the Court gets more attention. It alsostands to reason though that the coverage of the Court could be drowned outat moments in which the other branches of the government take center stage;for example, when elections require us to consider selecting new presidents


or legislators, unelected members of government might receive less attentionunless they somehow make themselves relevant to the electoral process.

Explanations of how we operationalize actions by the Court, factions on theCourt, and interactions between the Court and outsiders will be undertakenas we progress, but first we must detail what we mean when we say “coverageof the Supreme Court.” We also illustrate this coverage over time and discussthe implications for what makes up coverage as well.

What Coverage Looks Like

We begin with a discussion of the dependent variables of interest in thisresearch: volumes of media coverage. The first of these volumes of interest isoverall coverage of the Supreme Court. There are several ways we could goabout gathering this measure. We choose to utilize Associated Press coverageof the Supreme Court. We know that news flows from elite sources suchas the Associated Press (or the New York Times or Washington Post) to localsources (Breed, 1955; Brown, 1971; Rosenstiel, 2005). Stories produced bythe Associated Press end up in newspapers nationwide. We also know that,over time, local newspapers have increasingly dropped their own coverage ofnational affairs in exchange for relying on sources such as the Associated Press.Even though the market for newspaper news is declining, the reach of theAssociated Press as the source for news is undoubtedly growing, especially asthe number of news presenters increases but the number of news gatherersremains stagnant or even declines (Rosenstiel, 2005).1 Using this assessment ofthe media landscape as a foundation, how do we go about building over-timemeasures of coverage? We gather the volume of Associated Press stories onthe Supreme Court through a Lexis-Nexis database search. To ensure that ourcoverage volume variable consists only of stories that are about the SupremeCourt (and are not just stories that tangentially mention the Supreme Courtwhile focusing on other topics), we rely on the Lexis-Nexis subject searchfunction. Stories in which the phrase “Supreme Court” was part of the list ofstory subjects that accompany each story were included in the coverage volumevariable. Our series dates back to 1979 (the earliest point at which Lexis-Nexisallows us to gather both story headlines and story content) and extends to2006. What does this volume of coverage look like over time? Figure 1 displaysthe ebb and flow of Associated Press Supreme Court coverage between 1979and 2006 (compiled in semi-annual fashion).2

1Having the most influential and far-reaching sources of information on the Supreme Courtis also deemed especially important in studies that attempt to use media coverage to explainattitudes on the Court itself, given the difficulties that surround Court coverage. We feel thatdecision rules in such studies are equally applicable here in our choice to use the Associated Pressover, for example, the Vanderbilt Television News Archive or other major national newspapers.

2The choice of semi-annual examination is somewhat driven by the nature of independentvariables collected from existing Supreme Court data sets, but it is also driven by existing


FIGURE 1

Volume of AP Coverage of the Supreme Court, 1979–2006

Figure 1 depicts the volume of Associated Press coverage of the SupremeCourt between 1979 and 2006. We see that, over the first 10 years or so inour series, the Associated Press produced, on average, between 400 and 800stories per six-month period on the Supreme Court (for an average of between60 and 120 stories per month). We also see that, as the series progresses, thereis a slight decline in how often the Associated Press reports on the Court.After the mid 1990s, the number of stories per six-month period only breaks600 one time; meeting or exceeding this number was a regular occurrence inearlier years in the series. The period late in the series in which this numberwas broken was a period of extreme tumult involving the Court (includingthe O’Connor resignation, the Rehnquist death, and the Roberts, Miers, andAlito confirmation discussions and hearings in some cases). We also see adecent amount of fluctuation from one six-month period to the next, some ofwhich might be explained by the nature of the ways in which the Court works(with hearings held over an eight-month period but decisions often handeddown within a more compact period during late spring or early summer).

As scholars examining the media have shown, however, coverage is definednot only by the amount of attention an institution or politician receives, but

literature (such as Durr, Martin, and Wolbrecht, 2000) that uses semi-annual periods of timeto explain attitudes on the Court.


also by the nature of said coverage. Literature (e.g., Berinsky and Kinder, 2006;Clawson and Oxley, 2008; Druckman, 2001; Gamson and Modigliani, 1987;Iyengar, 1990; Kellstedt, 2003; Kinder and Sanders, 1996; Nelson, Clawson,and Oxley, 1997; Nelson and Oxley, 1999; Price, Nir, and Cappella, 2005;Zaller, 1992) has shown that the media are able to shape what individualsthink is important or relevant about an issue through the use of repeatedthemes (or frames as they are more commonly known). These frames havepowerful implications for the movement of opinion at the macro and microlevels. Given what we know about the existence and persistence of framing,what types of frames might we expect within coverage of the Court? Patterson’s(1993) analysis of coverage of campaigns might point us in a direction worthinquiring into. Patterson notes that coverage of campaigns is often dividedinto two categories that capture the substance of campaigning (what he calls“governing”) and the implications of campaigning (what he calls “game”). Inessence, candidates run for office and espouse positions and ideas on howthey would govern and this gets some coverage, but also reported on andanalyzed by the media (more than ever before) are the tactical decisions beingmade by campaigns (and the “horse race” taking place in the polls as alludedto by Bartels, 1988). There are clear parallels between covering campaignsin this way and covering the rest of government as well. Congress could becovered in terms of the substance of legislation and hearings and votes or interms of the conflict between parties and members. The president could becovered in terms of signing bills and executive agreements and attempts tospur Congress into action or in terms of the potentially partisan nature ofhis interactions with the legislative branch. Similarly, we could see the Courtcovered in terms of the substance of its decisions (which, as discussed earlier,happens on occasion though not as much as some believe it should) or in termsof the motivation behind and implications of its decisions. In other words, wemight see legal and political framing of the Court (and such framing mightbe explainable with the same battery of variables that may explain coverage ingeneral: actions, factions, and interactions). For example, it would be naturalto expect that when the Court acts, coverage of the legal aspects of action willensue, but when the Court reveals intrabranch division or when the Courtis spurred to move by outsiders, political coverage might flow forth fromjournalists.

We are therefore also interested in explaining not just the overall volumeof media coverage of the Supreme Court, but also the volume of two specifictypes of coverage over time: legal coverage and political coverage. How do wedo this? We can use the Associated Press coverage database as a foundationfrom which to start assessing frames of coverage (i.e., what is being discussedwhen the Associated Press discusses the Court), but what is the best way todo so? One way would be to go article by article and try to categorize eachas being focused on a topic. One could envision some articles being aboutCourt decisions, some being about Court members, some being about Courtideology, some being about legislative or executive interaction with the Court,


and some being about nominations. Going about analyzing content in thisway, however, might mask meaningful variation that exists within articles. Forexample, consider the opening paragraphs of this May, 1994 story about theCourt:

The ears of Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy must have beenburning. Kennedy’s recent decision eliminating the right to sue attorneys,accountants and others who indirectly assist in securities fraud was vilifiedat a Senate hearing Thursday that featured leading financial academics and atop regulator.

Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio, said failure to overrule the SupremeCourt’s decision could lead to “a serious undermining of the integrity ofour securities markets or years of confusion, unfairness and unnecessarylitigation.”

One might describe the beginning of this story as being about the contentof a Court decision. Another might describe the beginning of this story asbeing about the political fallout from a Court ruling. Either perspective hasvalidity, but we cannot categorically claim that one perspective is right andone perspective is wrong. If anything, we might claim that the first twoparagraphs of this story are about different topics (legal and political) and thatthis story contains many different substories within it. As scholars have shown,frames compete for space within stories (Jacoby, 2000; Kinder and Sanders,1996). As such, trying to categorize stories as being wholly about one topicor another topic might mask dynamics that take place within reporting. Wemust, therefore, adopt an approach that allows us to get inside the story to lookfor common themes across coverage over time. Computerized content analysisis one such approach. Rather than place stories into one category or another,computerized content analysis allows us to extract the prevalence of specificwords and phrases over time that fit the types of frames we are interested intracking. This process is undertaken here using a computer program calledWordStat.3 WordStat allows text to be categorized and counted using user-generated dictionaries (i.e., lists of words or phrases that the user wants theprogram to search for).

We are interested in the amount of coverage devoted to legal issues and theamount of coverage devoted to political implications of what the Court doesand the Court’s place in the political system. These types of coverage wouldcapture the two clearest elements of how the media might cover the Court:in terms of the substance of Court business and in terms of the ideologicalsystem-wide implications of Court activity on other branches of governmentand on party politics. In order to measure legal and political coverage, wecompile a list of words and phrases we feel capture elements of the law and ofthe ideological connection between the Court and national politics. The initiallist of legal words and phrases was drawn from a glossary of judicial system

3WordStat is produced by Provalis Research.


terms.4 The initial list of political words was drawn from a list of phrasescapturing ideological movement and the courts.5 We then build on this listby including synonyms of these words where applicable. The congruence ofthese words and phrases with the concepts of legal and political coverage wasthen validated through a survey process that asked individuals to place wordsunder broader concept umbrellas.6

WordStat then searches for the volume of these words and phrases persix-month period and presents raw counts. These counts provide the basisfor our measures of legal and political discussions taking place in AssociatedPress coverage of the Supreme Court between 1979 and 2006. We divide theraw counts by the number of stories per six-month period, which gives us ameasure of references per story; as such, we can discuss if stories overall gotmore or less legal or political from one half-year to the next. Before discussingwhat might drive such coverage, we should examine how legal and politicalcoverage move across the time period of interest. Figures 2 and 3 capture legaland political coverage over the 28 years studied here.

As we see in Figure 2, there are no over-time patterns when it comes to legalcoverage like those that existed in overall coverage (where we see a declinefrom the 1980s to most recent times). We see some spikes in legal coverage inthe late 1980s and early 1990s (specifically the second half of 1989, the firsthalf of 1991, and the first half of 1992), unparalleled throughout the rest ofthe series. The only period that approaches this time (following these peaks inthe late 1980s and early 1990s) in terms of legal coverage was the second halfof 2004. Prior to the three largest spikes, we also see clear upward movementin the series in the first half of 1981. We now move to political coverage inFigure 3.

As we see in Figure 3, political coverage of the Court appears much lessvolatile than overall coverage of the Court or even legal coverage of the Court.The first major spike in the series occurs in late 1987, and we see morenoticeable upward movement in the second half of 1991. Interestingly, theseries appears to get more volatile as time goes on, suggesting that the Courtmight be getting increasingly politicized (by the media definitely, but perhapsas a result of political discussions of the Court in an electoral context as well).

4The initial list of legal words includes the following roots: acquittal, active judge, admissible,affidavit, adr, amicus curiae, amicus, appellant, arraignment, bail, bench trial, brief, burden ofproof, caseload, case file, case law, cause of action, chambers, class action, clerk, damages, defacto, de jure, de novo, discharge, discovery, dismissal, due process, en banc, exculpatory, exparte, felony, habeas corpus, hearsay, high bench, high court, injunction, in camera, inculpatory,jurisdiction, jurisprudence, marble temple, moot, motion, original intent, original meaning,per curiam, peremptory, precedent, probation, pro tem, pro se, remand, robes, statute, strictscrutiny, subpoena, tort, venue, warrant, and writ.

5The initial list of political words includes the following roots: biased, colored, doctri-naire, dogma, extremist, faction, fanatic, ideological, jingo, obstinate, partial, partisan, pervert,politicize, one sided, prejudice, prepossess, sect, unfair, unjust, unindifferent, warp, and zealot.

6More specifically, individuals were asked to describe the search terms as either political,legal, or as part of other dummy categories. The survey process validated our placement of thewords and phrases used in the content analysis into the chosen categories.


FIGURE 2

Volume of Legal Coverage of the Supreme Court, 1979–2006

FIGURE 3

Volume of Political Coverage of the Supreme Court, 1979–2006


We see spikes in political coverage in 1998, 1999, 2000, 2003, and 2005 thatrepresent clear movement in how the media are covering the Court from onetime period to the next. We now move to operationalizing explanations foroverall coverage, legal coverage, and political coverage over time.

What Drives Coverage?

We believe that coverage overall and specific types of coverage (legal andpolitical) are driven by a battery of what we call action, faction, and interactionvariables. We begin with a discussion of variables that capture potential news-worthy action on the part of the Court. One action variable that might shapecoverage of the Court overall is the Court’s caseload. The more the Courtdecides to take on (and render decisions on), the more fodder exists for themedia to cover (which might lead to higher levels of coverage). Caseload mea-sures the number of actual decisions the Court renders in each semi-annualperiod.7 Another variable specific to Court action that might be newsworthyand that might shape coverage of the Court is what some have called coun-termajoritarian behavior, expressed through declaring laws unconstitutional.This type of judicial activism (first described in the literature on the Courtand public opinion by Caldeira, 1986) might draw attention from the mediabecause it deals with changes in existing law. Declaring a law unconstitutionalrepresents change in the legal status quo. It also might lead the media to de-scribe how the new legal atmosphere differs from the old and how Americansmight be affected. Laws declared unconstitutional is a count of the numberof federal laws the Supreme Court invalidated; it is collected from Spaeth’sSupreme Court Database and aggregated to create a semi-annual series ofcountermajoritarian behavior.

The relationships between members of the Court (and the link betweenideology on the Court and ideology in the political world at large) makeup the set of variables we call faction variables. The first of these variablescaptures unanimity (or disharmony) on the Court itself. We might think that5–4 decisions might send signals of conflict on the Court over the decisionthat 9–0 decisions do not (and as such, 5–4 decisions might make for richer,more interesting stories to tell, stories that fit with the conflictual frame inwhich the media enjoy couching stories about politics as Patterson (1993)describes). As such, we include a variable to capture what we call averagemajority size. Average majority size is the average number of justices in themajority for all the cases decided during that period. The data for the averagemajority size variable are drawn from the Spaeth Supreme Court Database.8

7Caseload is collected from the “Decision Date” variable in the Spaeth Supreme CourtDatabase.

8We find no evidence during our time period under examination that the average majoritysize measure is altered by vacancies within terms.


We are also interested in how the ideological aggregation of the positionsthe Court takes might drive media attention. As such, we include a predictorfamiliar to scholars that deal with approval of the Supreme Court: liberaldecision making. Liberal decision making draws upon a specific directionalityof decision making shown to drive public ire (Caldeira, 1986). Court liberalismmight also allow journalists to describe the Court in an easy to understandway, akin to how the president or Congress might be described: as liberal,conservative, or moderate. Like Durr, Martin, and Wolbrecht (2000), wegenerate a measure of the Supreme Court’s ideological position from SupremeCourt output. Across each Court term, we calculate the proportion of thatterm’s cases decided in the liberal direction.9 We include all cases formallydecided by the Court. Although other variables within the model are measuredsemi-annually, the Court’s ideological position is measured based on an entireCourt term. We hope to gauge the Court’s ideological position and in doingso, we fear a measure based on a small and most likely unrepresentative setof cases (as might be the case given the nuances of the Court’s calendar anddecision-rendering patterns) would not be particularly useful or valid. A singleideological measure for a term was thus used as an indication of the Court’sideological position for two consecutive six-month periods.

We close with what we call interaction variables, that is, variables thathighlight the Court’s place in the broader federal system and represent howCourt business might be affected by business taking place in other branches ofgovernment. One variable that interaction between the Court and the rest ofgovernment that might drive coverage is the relationship between retirementsand coverage of the Court. When an Associate or Chief Justice decides tostep down, it might spark a flood of retrospection about said justice’s timeon the Court. It might also lead to stories dealing with the vacancy and theprospects for filling said vacancy (be that in terms of likely candidates orpolitical fallout). Since turnover on the Court is relatively rare (so rare, in fact,that during an over 10-year period in our study, no retirement moments exist)and space on the Court is limited and laden with prestige, retirements (andthe nomination battles that follow) might prove to be flashpoints worthy ofabnormally high levels of coverage. They are harbingers of a new Court thatmight do business in the way that the previous Court did not. Retirements arealso moments at which all three branches of government converge (throughpresidential selection and Senate confirmation or denial) to play a role; thismight present the media with opportunities to tell more easily understandablestories about a branch of government that is less understood by the generalpublic (Hibbing and Theiss-Morse, 1995). Retirements were coded 1 for thepoints at which justices stepped down from the Court and 0 for periods inwhich there were no retirements.

9These data were obtained from Spaeth’s Supreme Court Database using the DIR variablethat codes each decision as either liberal or conservative based on the type of party a decisionfavors. For instance, a decision in favor of a labor union’s position over the corporation’s wouldbe considered a liberal decision.


Another interaction variable included is one capturing the presence of apresidential election. Many issues come to the forefront during presidentialelections, and these issues do tend to change from year to year. One issue thatdoes appear to be becoming more a part of the discussion that takes placeduring the campaign season is the topic of what presidential candidates thinkabout judicial philosophy, the current state of the Supreme Court, and thetypes of individuals that should be appointed if vacancies occur. Candidatesfor all federal offices seem to be asked these types of questions with increasingrapidity, but they appear to be most prevalent in the context of presidentialcontests (especially once nominees are decided and the choice between poten-tially differing philosophies when it comes to the Court’s makeup and decisionmaking are clear). On the other hand, the possibility exists that presidentialelections drown out coverage of every other event taking place politically atthe time; media coverage may become so focused on elections and as suchmay stray from actual talk of governing taking place (be that on the part oflegislators, executives, or even the Court). We include a dichotomous variablecapturing the presence of a presidential election (which, in the case of ourmodels, means the second half of 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, and2004).

In addition to these variables that capture change within and conflict onand surrounding the Court, we also include variables that capture potentialrelationships between prior levels of coverage and current levels of coverage(done through inserting measures that account for the amount of coverageone time period prior). The descriptive statistics for all the variables describedin this section are presented in Table 1.

Determinants of Overall Court Coverage Volume

Before delving into how the media covers the Supreme Court, we mustconsider how to model the relationship between our independent and de-pendent variables. We choose to use an error correction model (ECM) toestimate the overall coverage volume and the media content models. ECMsare time series models that explicitly model the short-run and long-run ef-fects of each independent variable on the associated dependent variable. AnECM is appropriate in this context for several reasons. Although frequentlyassociated with cointegrated series and nonstationary time series data, DeBoefand Keele (2008) demonstrate that these models can be applied even in theabsence of cointegration. Even more importantly, they also show in the samearticle that ECMs are very general models that can be used in a variety of timeseries contexts without making restrictive assumptions about the relationshipsbetween variables that may not be true (as might be the case if we opted fora lag-dependent variable model). For our purposes here, an ECM is appro-priate for its generality and its explicit estimation of the temporal dynamicsof the relationships we are interested in. The actions of the Supreme Court,


TABLE 1

Descriptive Statistics for All Variables

Variable Mean Mode Std Dev Min Max

AP story volume 556 221.7 235 1,202AP story volume, adjusted 558 154.4 326 981Legal language 1.27 0.17 0.90 1.75Legal language, adjusted 1.27 0.12 1.03 1.54Political language 1.22 0.08 0.98 1.44Political language, adjusted 1.23 0.06 1.12 1.34Caseload 61 49.97 6 147Caseload, adjusted 61 17.4 40 87Laws declared unconstitutional 0.71 1.3 0 4Laws declared unconstitutional, adjusted 0.72 0.73 0 2Liberal decisions 43.5 4.55 34.8 51.9Average majority size 7.4 0.55 6.3 8.8Average majority size, adjusted 7.4 0.37 6.7 8.0Retirements 0 0 1Presidential elections 0 0 1

NOTES: The mean and standard deviation are reported for continuous variables, and the modeis reported for noncontinuous variables. The minimum and maximum values are reportedfor all variables.

both within the institution itself and its interactions with other branches ofgovernment, may shape when and how journalists cover the Supreme Courtin the present time period and in the future. Events in the present time periodmay color the media’s view of the Court and alter the lens they evaluate theCourt through in future time periods as well. The media frames used contem-poraneously are also likely to become frames the media draws on more in thefuture as well, partially because reusing existing frames the public is familiarwith to cover the Supreme Court is likely more attractive to journalists. TheECM framework allows us to estimate and discuss these temporal dynamicsdirectly.

In addition to the question of modeling choices, we must also deal with thepotential effects of the seasonal nature of the Court’s calendar on a handful ofthe variables included in the model. The cyclical nature of Supreme-Court-related media coverage is evident in Figure 1. The volume of newspaper storiesabout the Court is substantially higher in the first period in each year becausethe Court hears most of its cases and releases more decisions (and often itsmost controversial decisions of that Court term) in the first half of the year(January–June). Time series data with a clear seasonal pattern, as exhibitedin the time series we created here, often present a methodological problemand call any inferences made based on the model estimates into question.To account for this possibility, we created seasonally adjusted time series that


we used for the analysis we conducted.10 The basic idea behind seasonallyadjusting time series data is to uncover the underlying variation within theseries that is not caused solely by cyclical seasonal variation. In this case, wewant to create series that reflect the true, underlying variation from one half-year period to the next in our variables of interest, namely, the volume ofmedia coverage, and the amount of legal and political language used in thiscoverage.

To sum up, the goal is removing the seasonal variation from the series,while retaining the underlying variation that is caused by factors other thanthe cyclical nature of the way the Court conducts its business. To do so, westarted by generating two series from each original series—one series with datafrom the first half of each year and a second series with data from the secondhalf of each year. Then we interpolated the missing data in each series (thesecond half year entries in the first half series and vice versa) by averaging thetwo temporally closest data points. The first and second half-year series werethen averaged together to form one single semi-annual series for each variable,but this time without the seasonal variation. We started with one completesemi-annual series with substantial seasonal variation, pulled this series apartto create one series with data points from the first half and one series with datapoints from the second half of each year, interpolated the missing data pointsto create two complete semi-annual series for the period 1979–2006, thenaveraged these two series to create a single semi-annual series that still containsthe underlying variation in the series but removes the seasonal variation.

This process has the effect of smoothing out the cyclical variation from thehigh activity, high coverage first half of the year to the lower activity, lowercoverage second half of the year, and instead captures the overall dynamics ofthe series from period to period, and year to year. As apparent from Table 1,the series means of the unadjusted and adjusted series are essentially identical;the main change seasonally adjusting the series makes is to the variance ofeach measure. The variances (and corresponding standard deviations) in theseasonally adjusted series are lower because we removed the variance causedsolely by seasonal variation. All of the series that were based on Court activitiesthat had seasonal variation from one half-year period to the next were adjustedusing this method.11 Measures unrelated to the cyclical nature of the SupremeCourt’s calendar, such as presidential elections, were not seasonally adjusted.

We now move to our effort to explain overall coverage of the SupremeCourt. Table 2 displays these findings.

10To check whether our method of seasonally adjusting the data unduly impacted ourfindings, the models were all estimated three different ways—once with the seasonally adjustedmeasures, once with the original data series that were not seasonally adjusted, and once withthe unadjusted data series but with the inclusion of a dummy variable for the first half ofeach calendar year. The results of all three models for each dependent variable are similar andtell consistent causal stories, which increases our confidence in the robustness of the findingspresented here.

11As Table 1 illustrates, this includes all three media measures, as well as caseload, lawsdeclared unconstitutional, and average majority size.


TABLE 2

Supreme Court Media Coverage, 1979–2006: An Error-Correction Model

Predictors Long-Run Effects Short-Run Effects

AP story volumet−1 −0.44∗∗

(0.11)Caseload 0.93 0.44

(1.84) (4.40)Laws declared unconstitutional 9.01 −21.51

(17.04) (30.45)Liberal decisions 7.05∗∗ 3.94

(2.87) (2.71)Average majority size −89.46 67.07

(80.71) (83.76)Retirements 91.22∗∗ 49.12∗

(44.96) (29.86)Presidential elections −13.30 −30.33

(46.68) (30.82)Constant 525.48

(744.44)N 53R-squared .44

∗∗p < 0.05; ∗p < 0.10, two-tailed tests.NOTES: Dependent variable = number of Supreme Court stories run by the AP. Data aresemi-annual and adjusted to account for seasonality in the data. Standard errors are inparentheses.

This first model examines the influence of our sets of action, faction, andinteraction variables on the semi-annual volume of Court-related media cov-erage. Looking at Table 2, the first thing to note is that liberal decision makingdrives media coverage of the Supreme Court. The higher the proportion ofliberal decision making on the part of the Court, the more attention theCourt receives from media outlets such as the Associated Press. Such a rela-tionship lends credence to the idea that ideological divisions on the Court(i.e., factionalism) spur journalists to take note. They do so in a distinctlydirectional fashion though. This might be because, given the generally con-servative nature of many courts (and the respect for precedent on the part ofmany jurists), liberal decisions often represent change (and change in a waythat might be noteworthy to journalists seeking ways to make the Court rel-evant to readership or viewership). For the 28-year period analyzed here, theaverage liberalism of the Supreme Court as measured by the direction of itsdecisions is 44 percent. In other words, the typical Court in this period onlydecided roughly four out of every 10 cases decided in each half-year periodin the liberal direction. In this sense, more liberal decisions may represent adeparture from the norm, at least for the time period analyzed here, and con-sequently draw more attention from the media. Some might also argue thata possible culprit here in this significant relationship is media bias, wherein a


left-leaning media might pay more attention (and carries more water for theimpact of outcomes) when decisions lean leftward as well. This relationshipbetween decision liberalism and Court coverage is strictly a long-run relation-ship, however. These long-run effects of liberal decision making are displayedin Figure 4.

Increases in the liberalism of the Supreme-Court’s output cause a significantreequilibration of the amount of news coverage about the Court. When thepercentage of liberal decisions increases by roughly 4.5 percent (a one standarddeviation increase), this change spurs an additional 73 Supreme-Court-relatednews stories. The full impact of this effect, however, is not felt in a single timeperiod. Rather, the increasingly liberal ideological tilt of the Court’s decisionsalters the volume of coverage over several successive time periods. In the firsthalf-year period after the increase in liberalism occurs (t + 1), the numberof stories about the Supreme Court jumps by 32, slightly less than half ofthe total long-run effect. In the following time periods, media coverage ofthe Supreme Court continues to increase until the entire predicted 73-storyincrease has occurred, though the size of the additional increases is smaller ineach subsequent half-year period.

These temporal dynamics suggest that the amount of attention the mediapays to the Supreme Court is influenced by the size and strength of the liberalfaction on the judicial bench. Since the Supreme Court rendered relativelyfewer liberal decisions from the 1980s to the early 2000s, increases in the liberalwing of the Court’s influence are likely more newsworthy. The temporalestimates also imply that increases in judicial liberalism reinvigorate mediaattention to the Court over several years, likely because the relatively staticnature of the bench over this period and suggestion of an ideological shiftattract more media attention for multiple periods as the media cover howthese factional differences, suggested by the disequilibrium caused by theinitial increase in liberalism, play out.

A second significant predictor of coverage of the Court is the presence of aretirement on the Court. When a justice retires, coverage of the Court increases(contemporaneously and in the long run). First, we see a short-run relationshipbetween retirements and coverage of just over 49 extra stories about the Courtin periods where a justice initially announces his or her impending retirementfrom the bench. As described earlier, retirements not only send potentiallynewsworthy signals that the Supreme Court is about to change in a tangible,noticeable way, but they also mark flashpoints at which the other branches ofgovernment will undertake direct relationships with Court business movingforward. They are moments at which all branches will have their say in one wayor another. Judicial retirements and the subsequent judicial nomination andconfirmation process are also moments that often portend conflict betweena president and a highly partisan opposition. They guarantee interactionbetween the Court and the other two branches of government. From themedia’s perspective, retirements might be deemed a much easier story to tellthan the average story on a Court decision. Such stories can be placed into


FIGURE 4

Predicted Changes in the Amount of Supreme Court Media Coverage


relatively easy to understand language on the part of journalists; in essence, aCourt retirement is like any other retirement or vacancy in which the presidentmust appoint a successor and seek approval. In other words, retirements fitinto easily understood narratives. Retirements are also relatively rare and oftentimes unexpected, two elements that might draw the focus of journalists.

We also see that retirements have long-run impact on media coverage ofthe Court. The long-run impact is also displayed graphically in Figure 4.The total long-run impact resulting from a justice’s announcement that heor she will step down from the bench is both statistically and substantivelysignificant. In addition to the instantaneous 49-story boost in Supreme-Court-related media coverage, retirement announcements also generate an additional207 news stories over the following time periods, starting with t + 1. Themodel predicts that the retirement announcement will be the catalyst for 91additional stories in t + 1, an additional 44 percent12 of the remaining totallong-run effect, or 51 additional stories, in t + 2, and so on until the entirelong-run effect has taken place. Put differently, this event causes more than aone standard deviation increase in media coverage over the long run, whichsuggests that judicial retirements are an exceptionally important determinantof the level of attention the media pays to the Supreme Court.

This long-run dynamic that plays out over several future half-year periods isnot surprising, given the nature of the retirement and subsequent appointmentand confirmation process. Retirements are not always immediately followedby an announcement of a successor; for example, Justice John Paul Stevensannounced his retirement in April 2010, but Elena Kagan’s nomination wasnot announced until a month later (and her process of hearings, confirmation,swearing in, and joining the Court took several months more). The nature ofthis process lends itself to an extended period of analysis on the part of themedia. Retirements can also bring with them, in the future, stories about thenew Court (and how said new Court differs from the previous Court, if atall).

Taken as a whole, these results indicate that both the divisions on the Courtitself (what we have called faction) and the broader political context (whichwe deem interaction) drive media coverage of the Supreme Court. Most ofthe day-to-day business of the Court does not seem to influence coverage,as evidenced by neither of our action variables coming back significant. Forinstance, more decisions or the effect of these decisions as relating to existinglaw does not translate into more coverage.13 This finding corroborates research

12In an ECM, the coefficient estimate for the first lag of the dependent variable, which inthis case is the total story volume in each half-year period, is also known as the error correctioncoefficient. This estimate indicates the rate at which the long-run effect of a given independentvariable (here, the presence of a retirement announcement) occurs. A larger negative coefficientindicates that the full long-run effect occurs more quickly and takes fewer total periods tooccur, and conversely a smaller negative coefficient indicates that a smaller portion of the totallong-run effect occurs in each subsequent period.

13The finding that the Supreme Court’s caseload does not impact the volume of mediacoverage of the Court is also at least partially a result of the seasonal adjustments we made to


by Katsh (1983) and Slotnick (1991), who both find that the media does notpay attention to every case, instead picking and choosing cases to cover ingreater detail for one reason or another. For instance, if several decisions arereleased at once the media typically chooses one decision to highlight ratherthan attempting to report on each decision (Slotnick, 1991). What does seemto determine the volume of media coverage is the degree to which the Court’sdecisions tilt to the left ideologically, as well as high-profile and potentiallytumultuous changes in the composition of the Court. As expected, theseresults indicate that rather than displaying equal attentiveness during eachhalf-year period, media attention is higher in periods that have newsworthyideological activity and atypical events such as judicial retirements.

The Legal and Political Content of Supreme Court Coverage

Now that we have examined the factors that drive overall coverage of theSupreme Court, we turn to the determinants of specific elements of thatcoverage, the legal and political frames. We begin by modeling the impact ofthe same set of variables from the overall coverage model (our action, faction,and interaction variables) on the volume of legal content in Supreme Courtcoverage. The results of this model are presented in the first two columns ofTable 3.

One predictor of whether media coverage of the Supreme Court has morelegal content is how often the Supreme Court declares laws unconstitutionalin its decisions. Periods with an activist Court that strikes down more legis-lation as unconstitutional lead the media to focus less on the legal aspects ofthe Supreme Court. With each additional law the Supreme Court declaresunconstitutional, the volume of legal language per Court story decreases inboth the short run and in the long run. In the period a law is struck down,the amount of legal language in Supreme Court media coverage decreasesinstantaneously by 0.05 words per story. While this effect may seem small,given the scale of the legal language volume (see Table 1) this change actuallyrepresents nearly a one-half standard deviation shift in the legal content ofcoverage. In addition to the initial decline in legal language, the amount oflegal language used by journalists in their coverage of the Court drops by anadditional 0.21, which amounts to an almost two standard deviation decreasein legal language over the long run, as displayed in Figure 5. The relatively

the data used to estimate the model presented here. The caseload in each half-year period is themost important driver of the cyclical nature of the Court’s activity because the number of casesthe justices hear in the first half of the year (January–June) is much higher than the caseloadin the second half (July–December). This effect is caused by the timing of the October–Juneterm and the concentration of oral arguments and decisions in the first half of the calendaryear. Seasonally adjusting the model to account for the cyclical nature of the Court’s activitiesmakes us more confident in the robustness of the model results, but does remove the influenceof the caseload since that is highly correlated with seasonal variation we removed from theseries to uncover and analyze the true, underlying variation in the series.


TABLE 3

Supreme Court Media Frames, 1979–2006: An Error-Correction Model

Legal Language Political Language

Long-Run Short-Run Long-Run Short-RunPredictors Effects Effects Effects Effects

AP media framest−1 −0.19∗∗ −0.18∗

(0.09) (0.10)Caseload −0.00 −0.01 0.00 0.00

(0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00)Laws declared unconstitutional −0.04∗∗ −0.05∗ 0.02∗∗ −0.01

(0.02) (0.03) (0.01) (0.01)Liberal decisions 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

(0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00)Average majority size −0.06 −0.16∗ 0.03 −0.01

(0.08) (0.09) (0.05) (0.04)Retirements 0.00 −0.02 0.06∗∗ 0.03∗∗

(0.04) (0.03) (0.02) (0.01)Presidential elections 0.07 0.05 0.00 −0.01

(0.05) (0.03) (0.02) (0.01)Constant 0.88 −0.05

(0.75) (0.38)N 53 53R-squared .34 .40

∗∗p < 0.05; ∗p < 0.10, two-tailed tests.NOTES: Dependent variables constructed from Associated Press coverage. Data are semi-annual and adjusted to account for seasonality in the data. Standard errors are in parenthe-ses.

small error correction coefficient, whose estimate is −0.19, also indicates thatthis decline takes effect relatively slowly and that the impact of declaring a sin-gle law unconstitutional continues to influence the content of Court-relatedmedia coverage for several periods after the decision occurs.

Substantively, this result suggests that the Supreme Court’s own actions cancause a shift in how the institution is perceived and ultimately portrayed bythe media. Striking down legislation crafted by Congress is a relatively rareevent. In an average semi-annual period, the Court only strikes down betweenzero and one laws. By striking down legislation, the Court delivers a clearrebuke and makes a strong statement about its role in the political process.Although less legal language does not necessarily imply that the media usemore political language,14 striking down a law is often interpreted by themedia as countermajoritarian behavior on the part of the Court and may leadto less legal analysis in favor of more coverage of the Supreme Court’s politicalrelationship with the legislative branch. The surprising and rare nature of the

14In fact, the correlation between legal and political language is only −0.33, which suggeststhere is an inverse relationship between legal and political media coverage but the relationshipis not as strong as one might anticipate given the time series nature of the data.


FIGURE 5

Predicted Changes in Supreme Court Media Frames

action may also drown out the typical legal analysis given to average, andtherefore less newsworthy, cases.

The relationship between declaring laws unconstitutional and legal languageis the first sign in our models presented so far that the nature of the Court’sworkload (i.e., Court action) shapes coverage (here, a specific type of coverage).A second variable directly related to the level of legal discussion in coverage ofthe Supreme Court is the average majority size. This relationship is significantin the short run only, and only at the 0.1 significance level. The larger theaverage majority size, the less space the media devote to legal aspects of Courtactivity within stories on the Court, perhaps eschewing legal discussion fordiscussion of unanimity of decision making.

As with the overall volume of coverage, the determinants of media coverage’slegal content is driven by multiple factors; here, we see that action- andfaction-based predictors matter, while Court interaction with other branchesof government (as measured through retirements and elections) does notsignificantly shape the legal content of Court stories. This makes some inherentsense; when talking about the nuts and bolts of Court decisions or, in otherwords, the legal aspects, we might expect predictors specific to the Courtitself to be more likely to drive coverage than predictors linked to interactions


with other political actors since these interactions are considered inherentlymore political than the Court’s own legal decision-making process. When itcomes to the level of political content in Supreme Court coverage, however,a slightly different explanatory picture develops. These findings, presented inthe last two columns of Table 3, encompass action- and interaction-basedexplanations for the degree to which the media describe the Court in terms ofideology and politics.

First, we see a significant link between declaring laws unconstitutionaland the level of political coverage within Associated Press attention paid to theSupreme Court. When the number of laws declared unconstitutional increases,so too does the amount of political coverage per story. As discussed earlier, thedeclaration of a law as unconstitutional is a stinging rebuke to those who makeand enforce laws. This undoubtedly can lead to media discussions of how theCourt’s action affects the broader political system, but also to discussions ofthe strength of the Court as a political player within the federal system. Therelationship between declaring laws unconstitutional and a rise in politicaldiscussion within coverage of the Court is strictly a long-run relationship, andits dynamics across future time periods can be seen in Figure 5.

Although this event has no contemporaneous effect, starting with t + 1, italters media coverage of the Court for multiple years and has the cumulativelong-run impact of an additional 0.11 political words per Court-related story.Roughly a fifth (18 percent) of the total long-run impact of striking a lawdown on the political content of media coverage is felt in t + 1. Media useof political frames in Supreme Court coverage continues to increase over thefollowing periods until the full 0.11 effect has occurred. As with interpretingthe substantive importance of a shift in the amount of legal language, itis important to consider the scale of the political language variable. A onestandard deviation shift in political language is equal to 0.06, so a cumulativelong-run increase of 0.11 is approximately a two standard deviation increase,which is substantively significant.15

As we saw with the overall volume of media coverage, there are also sig-nificant short- and long-run relationships between retirements on the Courtand political coverage. Retirements on the Court lead to a contemporaneousincrease in the level of political discussion within articles on the Court of 0.03,or a one-half standard deviation increase. This is not surprising; retirementsare events for which we would expect discussion of partisanship, extremism,or politicizing of the judiciary to become commonplace within coverage.This relationship once again lends credence to the idea that moments ofinteraction with outsiders shape coverage; here we now know that not only isoverall coverage shaped, but so too are the elements within said coverage. Thisrelationship also affects coverage across future time periods. Figure 5 displays

15Given existing research (Johnson and Socker, 2008) illustrating the effects of politicallanguage on attitudes toward the Court, such a shift in media coverage might tangibly altersentiment toward the judiciary down the line as well.


the long-run relationship between a retirement from the Court and politicalcoverage. Over the next several years, the political language in media coverageof the Court increases an additional 0.33 words per story, although this totalimpact is not felt immediately but occurs gradually over several time periods.

We see, in total, that political coverage is shaped by both the actions theCourt takes (declaring laws unconstitutional), as well as by moments portend-ing interaction with political entities outside the judicial branch (the implica-tions of retirements). With political coverage, however, potential divisions orfactions (as expressed through ideological decision making or majority sizes)do not hold sway. Overall, it makes sense that different types of predictorsmight drive the media to tackle analysis of the Court in different ways. Eventsthat generate interbranch interaction generate more political language becausethey situate the Court within the broader political system and emphasize theCourt’s political and constitutional role, rather than its role as an independentneutral arbiter. Retirements, for example, have clear political implications.Retirements force politicians and the public to consider how the ideologicalfoundations of the Court may or may not shift. Using political language todescribe such uncertainty is understandable (and is reflected in our findings).Declaring laws unconstitutional also has clear political implications for thebroader system, in that such an act rebukes the acts of those in the legislativeand the executive. The legal foundation of such decision making might bedrowned out by talk of how legislators and executive branch actors will react.

Discussion

Previous research on the relationship between the media and the SupremeCourt has either focused on media content in specific cases or examinedhow media coverage, taking the content as given, shapes public opinion.This study is a departure from previous studies in several respects. First, thisresearch is an attempt to take a step back and examine the factors that driveboth the overall volume and the content of Court-related media coverage.We know that the content of media coverage influences public perceptions ofthe Supreme Court. Since the media itself is ultimately responsible for whenand how the Court is covered, understanding what drives their coverage is animportant part of understanding the relationship between the Court and themass public. We can better answer the question of what portions of Courtactivity are the public more likely to learn about. This research also approachesthe relationship between the media and the Supreme Court from a differentperspective than previous research. Rather than studying the relationship ata single snapshot (or several snapshots) in time or in relation to a particularcase decision, we build on the extant micro-level research by examining therelationship over an extended time period, helping us understand the temporaldynamics of this relationship.


So what does influence media coverage of the Supreme Court? Explanationsof Court-related media coverage can be grouped into three broad categories—action taken by the Court, faction (or lack thereof ) on the Court, and interac-tion between the Court and other branches of government (defined in severalstructural or political ways). We find that factionalism on the Court and in-teraction between the Court and other branches of government, specificallyseen through the lenses of Court liberalism and retirements, respectively, arekey to explaining when the Court does and does not receive media attention.We then find that elements of all three of these types of factors influenceeither the legal and political content of coverage; especially clear is the im-portance of the action of declaring a law unconstitutional, which shapes bothlegal and political coverage. These findings have broader implications for ourunderstanding of the relationship between the media and the Supreme Court.They show us that the definition of what is newsworthy when it comes tothe Court is multifaceted and can encompass not just major events such asretirements, but also the accumulation of day-to-day action over time (as seenthrough the significance of liberalism, average majority sizes, or declaring lawsunconstitutional).

This study demonstrates that media coverage of the Court is a function ofwhat the Court actually does as a whole, as well as what individual Court actorsdo. Ideological positioning on the Court and its willingness to strike downlegislation impact Court-related media coverage. We know that this coveragesubsequently affects public opinion about the Court, but our research helpsdraw a tighter connection between the Court’s outputs and public opinionof the Court. Since media is the information source that links the Court andthe public, it is useful to know that media coverage is in some way relatedto what the Court is actually doing. This finding helps strengthen the ideathat Supreme Court actions can impact public perception of the Court. Moregenerally, this research has empirically examined the how and what of SupremeCourt media coverage, providing us with a better understanding of how theCourt and the political environment influence media coverage and ultimatelypublic knowledge of what the Court does and how it does it over time. Finally,if media coverage is, as Lippmann (1922) once claimed, a searchlight, we haveillustrated here that when it comes to the Court, this searchlight does notmove around aimlessly, but rather is moved by what the Court does, how itdoes it, and how and when the Court works with outsiders.

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Documents

Actions, Factions, and Interactions: Newsworthy Influences on Supreme Court Coverage*