Blacks and the United States Supreme Court: Models of Diffuse Support

Abstract

Diffuse support is a central concept in efforts to explain institutional stability. Supportive attitudes constitute a reservoir of good will especially useful for institutional maintenance when political authorities make policies with which many disagree. Here we focus on diffuse support for the Supreme Court, an institution for which popular esteem is especially important, and direct our attention toward African Americans, one of the most important minorities in American politics. Using data from an unusually large national sample of blacks in 1987, we describe the attitudes of this group toward the Supreme Court and compare them to those of whites, and we also offer and test two competing theoretical accounts of support in this segment of the population. In contrast to earlier eras, blacks are on balance fairly positive toward the Court but they are decidedly less positive than are whites. We can explain a significant portion of the persistent support among blacks for the Court as a residue of positive affect created largely during the era of the Warren Court. We conclude with some speculation about the implications of what we have learned about blacks and the Court for the broader question of institutional stability and instability.