Opinion Development in the Mass Public - The Effect of Roe v. Wade.

The Supreme Court is widely credited with launching significant social change. This belief is challenged by Rosenberg (1991, Hollow Hope) who contends that the Court lacks the mechanisms and visibility necessary to affect the public let alone bring about major change. Contradicting Rosenberg, some scholars have found evidence indicating that the Court can affect society, particularly by changing public opinion. Scholars have developed two conflicting theories: legitimacy-conferring and polarization. The legitimacy-conferring theory contends that the Court can shift public opinion favorably towards a policy by conferring its legitimacy upon it (e.g. Hoekstra 1995, APQ 23(1):109-129). Contrastingly, the polarization theory maintains that the Court pushes public opinion towards more extreme positions (e.g. Franklin and Kosaki 1989, APSR 83(3):751-771). This body of literature assumes that people have formulated opinions on an issue. However, not all people possess developed opinions on an issue when a decision is handed down, and this work neglects the Court's affect on those individuals.We seek to fill this absence by examining whether the Court has the ability to effect opinion development in addition to change. In our paper, we test the hypothesis that the Court's decisions can inspire opinion development by examining the effect of Roe v. Wade. We find that knowledge of the Court's decision significantly increases the likelihood that a respondent expresses a fully formed opinion on the issue of abortion and thus conclude that the Court is capable of sparking opinion development. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]