Measuring the Countermajoritarian Nature of Supreme Court Decisions
该研究通过估算1946年至2018年间最高法院判决的反多数得分，发现法院很少进行实质性的反多数行为，但多数案件在一定程度上表现出反多数性，且反多数性更强的案件获得更多媒体关注。
The countermajoritarian difficulty is central to constitutional theory. With that in mind, scholars have tested implications of the countermajoritarian difficulty by analyzing whether public opinion influences the Supreme Court, whether the Court is attentive to elected institutions, and whether the Court enacts policy change. The conclusion is that the Court is less countermajoritarian than the theoretical perspective assumes. We move beyond testing implications of the countermajoritarian difficulty by estimating countermajoritarian scores for cases the Court decided between 1946 and 2018. Our results suggests that the Court rarely engages in substantial countermajoritarianism, but a plurality of cases do display it to some degree. We explore this variation and find that the Court is more countermajoritarian when it is more institutionalized and has less ideological diversity. We probe the implications of countermajoritarianism and find that cases that are more countermajoritarian receive more media attention.