Judicial Activism and Media: Examining the Impacts of Ideological Asymmetry and News Sources on Supreme Court Confidence

Traditional understandings indicate that conservatives, compared to liberals, experience greater reductions in confidence when they disagree with the Supreme Court’s perceived use of judicial activism. Conventional wisdom also holds that institutional confidence is shaped by Americans’ preferred news source, with internet and broadcast media associated with stronger negative reactions to the Court. In this paper, I argue that this ideological disagreement will produce greater declines in confidence among conservatives than liberals, and that conservatives’ consumption of internet and broadcast news will have a more negative impact on their institutional confidence than that of comparable liberal viewers. Using Supreme Court and public opinion data, I identified two key findings: (1) contemporary liberals experience greater declines in confidence than conservatives when faced with ideological misalignment; and (2) internet and broadcasting news consumption is associated with larger reductions in confidence among conservatives than among liberals. These findings challenge prevailing assumptions about ideological asymmetry and highlight the role of media in shaping institutional confidence.