The manner in which political institutions convey their policy outcomes can have important implications for how the public views institutions’ policy decisions. This paper explores whether the way in which the U.S. Supreme Court communicates its policy decrees affects how favorably members of the public assess its decisions. Specifically, we investigate whether attributing a decision to the nation’s High Court or to an individual justice influences the public’s agreement with the Court’s rulings. Using an experimental design, we find that when a Supreme Court outcome is ascribed to the institution as a whole, rather than to a particular justice, people are more apt to agree with the policy decision. We also find that identifying the gender of the opinion author affects public agreement under certain conditions. Our findings have important implications for how public support for institutional policy-making operates, as well as the dynamics of how the Supreme Court manages to accumulate and maintain public goodwill.

中文翻译：

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命名：最高法院意见归属对公民对政策结果评估的影响

政治机构传达其政策结果的方式对公众如何看待机构的政策决定具有重要意义。本文探讨了美国最高法院传达其政策法令的方式是否会影响公众对其决定的评价。具体而言，我们调查将决定归因于国家高等法院或个人法官是否会影响公众对法院裁决的同意。使用实验设计，我们发现当最高法院的结果归因于整个机构而不是特定的法官时，人们更容易同意政策决定。我们还发现，在某些条件下，确定意见作者的性别会影响公众同意。