Who's on the Bench? The Impact of Latino Descriptive Representation on Supreme Court Approval
20 Pages Posted: 1 Aug 2011 Last revised: 31 Aug 2011
Date Written: 2011
Abstract
Latinos are an increasingly influential element of the American polity and are likely to continue to be significant actors in the future. However, studies investigating the impact of Latino descriptive representation on perceptions of the judiciary are scarce in the literature. Moreover, until Justice Sonia Sotomayor's appointment to the Supreme Court, Latinos were simply not represented at the highest level of the federal judiciary. The present analysis addresses the gap in the literature by examining the effect of Sotomayor's appointment on Latino and Anglo evaluations of the Supreme Court. Using repeated measures from two statewide surveys conducted in Texas, we find that Latino approval of the Court increases dramatically after the Sotomayor appointment, while Anglo support remains essentially the same.
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