Public Opinion and Opposition Party Success: Evidence from the European Constitutional Courts

Do “the people” influence high court decision-making? There is, at first glance, little apparent reason for the answer to be yes. Yet there has long existed empirical support to conclude that the U.S. Supreme Court has been responsive to the public's mood. In this article, we consider—in a new environment, and at a more direct level—whether public opinion can act as a mechanism to spur judicial decision-making and shape court-legislative interactions. In particular, we leverage the ability of parliamentary opposition groups in many countries to file legal challenges directly to the constitutional court through the abstract review process. Overall, we find a strong indication that these high court judges do respond in an indirect way to the general public will, overturning cases more often and agreeing with the parliament less often when public approval is shifting away from the parliamentary majority and toward the opposition.