Basically public perception appears to have reversed course after Obama was elected, with more Americans thinking that the Court is more liberal now that Obama has been elected and Sotomayor appointed.  While there are some interesting theories about justices trending liberal over their tenures, I suspect that more obsessive SCOTUS watchers would, whether they are happy or upset by it, say that the Court has either maintained its ideological balance or trended conservative in recent years.  

Why does public perception data seems to trend the other way?  It's a small change, to be sure, but I wonder if perceptions about the Court aren't the product cultural cognition.  If so, then it would make sense that people who think of the country as a whole as becoming more liberal under Obama as thinking that the Court, too, has become more liberal.  As a cultural touchpoint, it would be disconcerting to people at both ends of the ideological spectrum to think that Obama has had no impact on the ideology of the Court or -- even more disconcerting for ideologues on both sides -- that the Court may trend conservative in his administration.  Just a theory for now -- we'd need more data to test it. 

"Basically the reason that people react in a close-minded way to information is that the implications of it threaten their values," says Dan Kahan, a law professor at Yale University and a member of The Cultural Cognition Project. 

Have a listen!

The question of the meaning of a cross in the context of a war memorial did give rise to one heated exchange, between Justice Scalia and Peter J. Eliasberg, a lawyer for Mr. Buono with the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California.

Mr. Eliasberg said many Jewish war veterans would not wish to be honored by “the predominant symbol of Christianity,” one that “signifies that Jesus is the son of God and died to redeem mankind for our sins.”

Justice Scalia disagreed, saying, “The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of the dead.”

“What would you have them erect?” Justice Scalia asked. “Some conglomerate of a cross, a Star of David and, you know, a Muslim half moon and star?”

Mr. Eliasberg said he had visited Jewish cemeteries. “There is never a cross on the tombstone of a Jew,” he said, to laughter in the courtroom.

Justice Scalia grew visibly angry. “I don’t think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead,” he said. “I think that’s an outrageous conclusion.”

Stephen Burbank (in an email) points out that this has all the markers of cognitive illiberalism as described by our article in the Harvard Law Review on the Supreme Court's decision in Scott v. Harris:

Because they are not generally aware of their own disposition to form factual beliefs that cohere with their cultural commitments [judges] manifest little uncertainty about their answers to [policy questions turning on issues of disputed fact]. But much worse, because they can see full well the influence that cultural predispositions have on those who disagree with them, participants in policy debates often adopt a dismissive and even contemptuous posture towards their opponents' beliefs....

It may be cognitively difficult for someone with the cultural commitments of Justice Scalia to understand the cross as anything other than a universal symbol profound respect, and to struggle with evidence to the contrary.  But struggling with cultural blindspots is something we expect judges to do, particularly in cases involving questions about the establishment clause.  

• Overcoming the Fear of Cultural Politics: Constructing a Better Gun Debate
• More Statistics, Less Persuasion: A Cultural Theory of Gun-Risk Perceptions
• Beyond the Gun Fight: The Aftermath of the Virginia Tech Massacre
• Modeling Facts, Culture and Cognition in the Gun Debate
• Gun Litigation: A Cultural Critique

(Thanks to Sarah Lawsky for the link.) 

 

The meeting on artificial intelligence could be pivotal to the future of the field. Paul Berg, who was the organizer of the 1975 Asilomar meeting and received a Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1980, said it was important for scientific communities to engage the public before alarm and opposition becomes unshakable.

"If you wait too long and the sides become entrenched like with G.M.O.," he said, referring to genetically modified foods, 'then it is very difficult. It’s too complex, and people talk right past each other."

This is a topic ripe for investigation by cultural theorists of risk.