Popular Constitutionalism, Legal Pragmatism, and Support for Judicial Reform

The American public has high levels of support for various types of judicial reform, and in this article, we show using survey evidence that the public’s perception of the U.S. Supreme Court’s actual decision-making process and their normative preference for what SHOULD influence that process strongly affect support for six different judicial reforms. We confirm the conventional wisdom that those who perceive the Court as politicized have higher levels of support for reform. In addition, we show that those who desire a more representative court and support the doctrine of legal pragmatism also exhibit high levels of support. We argue that judicial reform advocates should design their campaigns to appeal to those who desire a more representative and pragmatic court, as that could expand the coalition of reform supporters beyond those who disagree with the policy of a Court they see as politicized.