Public Opinion and Constitutional Controversy

By Nathaniel Persily, Jack Citrin, and Patrick Egan (eds.)

(Oxford University Press, 2008)

Brown v. Board of Education. Roe v. Wade. Bush v. Gore. Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. With these and other high-impact rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court has placed itself at the center of many of the most important political controversies of our time. How do Americans respond to these decisions? Does the public accept the High Court as the final arbiter in the “culture wars”? Or do such rulings lead to a backlash in public opinion? 

      In Public Opinion and Constitutional Controversy, NYU political scientist Patrick J. Egan and his collaborators answer these vital questions. The work traces the trajectory of public opinion on more than a dozen issues addressed by the Supreme Court—including desegregation, school prayer, abortion, the death penalty, affirmative action, gay rights, assisted suicide, and national security. Egan, an assistant professor in NYU’s Wilf Family Department of Politics, edited the book with Columbia University School of Law Professor Nathaniel Persily and Jack Citrin, a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley.