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Compensation and Compliance: Sources of Public Acceptance of the U.K. Supreme Court's Brexit Decision
Author(s) -
GonzalezOcantos Ezequiel,
Dinas Elias
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
law and society review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.867
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1540-5893
pISSN - 0023-9216
DOI - 10.1111/lasr.12421
Subject(s) - supreme court , public opinion , brexit , opposition (politics) , salient , law , judicial opinion , politics , perception , political science , compliance (psychology) , majority opinion , compensation (psychology) , law and economics , sociology , social psychology , economics , psychology , european union , neuroscience , economic policy
The perception that a high court's decision is binding and final is a crucial prerequisite for its ability to settle political conflicts. Under what conditions are citizens more likely to accept controversial judicial rulings? Mass acceptance is determined, in part, by how rulings are framed during public debate. This paper takes a broad view of the strategies and actors that influence the discursive environment surrounding judgments, calling attention to hitherto unexamined determinants of mass acceptance. We theorize that third parties can boost acceptance by pledging compliance, and that courts can moderate opposition by compensating losers. We also look at how populist attacks on judiciaries, common in contemporary democracies, affect acceptance. We test these propositions using a survey experiment conducted in the aftermath of the UK Supreme Court's Brexit decision, the most salient judgment handed down by this court to date. The paper moves the literature on courts and public opinion beyond the United States, and presents evidence backing largely untested assumptions at the heart of models of judicial behavior regarding the benefits of crafting rulings with an eye on the preferences of key audiences.