Michael A Zilis
Biographic Data
| ID | 3071936 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael A Zilis |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael A |
| FAMILY NAME | Zilis |
| SIGNATURE | ZILIS M A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Kentucky |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8637-8260 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 119 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Democratic Institutions Under Threat: Corrosive Frames, Internet News, and the U.S. Supreme Court
Are democratic institutions under threat in the United States? We examine an understudied democratic bedrock: the judiciary and, in particular, the U.S. Supreme Court. We draw on data from “SCOTUSapp,” a tool that provides a database of 100,000+ news articles across thousands of unexamined sources. We find a new media environment where the Court receives attention from thousands of ideologically fragmented outlets. Additionally, some framings of …
Supreme Court Legitimacy in a New Media Era: Judicial Legitimacy, Polarization, and the Changing Media Landscape
The media environment has changed dramatically in the last 25 years. “New media” sources now dominate the landscape, although there has been very little systematic work on such coverage, particularly as it applies to courts and the rule of law. We use a new tool—SCOTUSapp—to gather news stories spanning five-plus years from thousands of outlets. Specifically, we examine the negativity, simplicity, and ideological tenor of coverage as it relates t…
Pushback: The Political Fallout of Unpopular Supreme Court Decisions. By Dave Bridge
The Rule of Law in Red and Blue: Affective Polarization and Support for Legal Institutions in the United States
A defining feature of democracies is an independent legal system, where elites and the public alike accept the broader legitimacy of its actions, even if they run counter to political preferences. Existing scholarship suggests that public support for rule of law institutions is rooted in perceptions of procedural fairness. However, amid increasing levels of affective polarization, we posit a partisan presidential heuristic wherein citizens’ views…
How Identity Politics Polarizes Rule of Law Opinions
Ascriptive Characteristics and Perceptions of Impropriety in the Rule of Law: Race, Gender, and Public Assessments of Whether Judges Can Be Impartial
Perceptions of procedural fairness influence the legitimacy of the law and because procedures are mutable, reforming them can buttress support for the rule of law. Yet legal authorities have recently faced a distinct challenge: accusations of impropriety based on theirascriptivecharacteristics (e.g., gender, ethnicity). We study the effect of these traits in the context of the U.S. legal system, focusing on the conditions under which citizens per…
Brandon L. Bartels and Christopher D. Johnston. Curbing the Court: Why the Public Constrains Judicial Independence
Conventional wisdom once suggested that the Supreme Court could operate at a remove from the most bitter partisan battles. That is no longer the case. Since 2016, two election-year vacancies opened partisan fractures over the future of the Court, and a third vacancy heightened the stakes when the nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, was accused of sexual assault. In an era of stark polarization, it is fair to ask whether the Supreme Court’s legitimacy is se…
Do Americans perceive diverse judges as inherently biased
Although women and minorities hold an increasing share of judgships in the United States, they remain underrepresented. We explore Americans’ perceptions of the bias of women and minority judges – one of the possible challenges to creating a diverse bench. We argue that prejudice against these groups manifests in a subtle way, in the belief that diverse judges cannot fairly adjudicate controversies that involve their ingroup. To test our theory, …
Defying the Supreme Court: The Impact of Overt Resistance to Landmark Legal Rulings
Objective To explore the political impact of overt resistance to judicial rulings. Existing approaches to answering this question rely on a framework that overlooks important components of how resistance resonates in the modern era. Methods Focusing on the Supreme Court's ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges and resistance by local county clerks, we model the relationship between resistance and public opinion. We demonstrate that disobedience affected …
The Sources and Consequences of Political Rhetoric: Issue Importance, Collegial Bargaining, and Disagreeable Rhetoric in Supreme Court Opinions
How do political actors use rhetoric after an initial policy battle? We explore factors that lead Supreme Court justices to integrate disagreeable rhetoric into opinions. Although disagreeable language has negative consequences, we posit that justices pay this cost for issues with high personal significance. At the same time, we argue that integrating disagreeable rhetoric has a deleterious effect on the institution by reducing majority coalition…
Cognitive Heuristics, Inter-Institutional Politics, and Public Perceptions of Insulated Institutions: The Case of the U.S. Supreme Court
How do citizens form perceptions about the ideological priorities of insulated institutions? Currently, there is little consensus on how or even whether citizens form such views. Focusing on the Supreme Court, I argue that perceptions of institutional ideology are influenced by an inter-institutional heuristic, or the popular perception that the president directly and indirectly influences the Court’s ideological direction. Using a multiple metho…
Negative Media Coverage of the Supreme Court: The Interactive Role of Opinion Language, Coalition Size, and Ideological Signals
Objective We offer a novel consideration of how judicial behavior influences Court coverage, examining when the media use negative language to cover the Supreme Court, and the consequences of this portrayal. Methods Regression analysis to examine over 1,000 news articles from 29 diverse outlets covering rulings from the 2014 term, using text‐based measures of the Court and media's negative coverage. Results We find that the Court sends an importa…
The Conditional Effectiveness of Legislative Threats: How Court Curbing Alters the Behavior of (Some) Supreme Court Justices
The separation-of-powers literature focuses on how the preferences of one branch constrain the behavior of its counterparts. Yet, in much of this work, scholars do not address how responsive behavior varies across particular members. Focusing on Court curbing legislation in Congress, we develop a model of heterogeneous responsiveness. Our theory identifies two distinct mechanisms that underpin responsiveness in judicial behavior, implying that th…
Blurring Institutional Boundaries: Judges’ Perceptions of Threats to Judicial Independence
The legislature wields multiple tools to limit judicial power, but scholars have little information about how judges interpret variant threats and which they find most concerning. To provide insight, we conduct original interviews regarding legislative threats to courts with over two dozen sitting federal judges, representing all tiers of the federal judiciary. We find that judges have a nuanced understanding of threats and tend to identify compo…
Minority Groups and Judicial Legitimacy: Group Affect and the Incentives for Judicial Responsiveness
This paper introduces a new perspective into the literature on judicial legitimacy by examining the incentives for courts to cater to a popular majority and offering a novel model of legitimacy that has consequences for judicial responsiveness. The account integrates into the literature classic research on how strategic social groups shape public opinion. I theorize that citizens use their perceptions of the judiciary’s support for various social…
Restraining the Court: Assessing Accounts of Congressional Attempts to Limit Supreme Court Authority
We propose a multilevel account of legislative Court curbing in order to assess existing explanations as to why such proposals come about. We argue that although Court curbing is commonly seen as the result of institutional conflict between Congress and the Supreme Court, it is best understood as a product of three interrelated factors: the individual motivations on the part of lawmakers, the partisan context in which they operate, and institutio…
Disagreeable Rhetoric and the Prospect of Public Opposition: Opinion Moderation on the U.S. Supreme Court
Elite rhetoric is an important aspect of democracy, and understanding why elites alter their rhetorical tone is vital to understanding the nature of public–elite interaction. In this paper, we identify the conditions under which insulated elites respond to public opinion by changing the amount of disagreeable rhetoric they emphasize. We examine Supreme Court opinions and theorize that the majority limits the use of disagreeable rhetoric—language …
The Limits of Legitimacy: Dissenting Opinions, Media Coverage, and Public Responses to Supreme Court Decisions
When the U.S. Supreme Court announces a decision, reporters simplify and dramatize the complex legal issues by highlighting dissenting opinions and thus emphasizing conflict among the justices themselves. This often sensationalistic coverage fosters public controversy over specific rulings despite polls which show that Americans strongly believe in the Court's legitimacy as an institution. In The Limits of Legitimacy, Michael A. Zilis illuminates…
Stepping on Congress: Courts, Congress, and Interinstitutional Politics
Legislative enactment is only one step in the life of a law. How a law shapes public life after enactment is frequently the result of whether the judiciary interprets the provisions contained in a law and how courts reconcile provisions within and across laws. But the factors that determine whether the judiciary ends up playing such a role are not well understood. We investigate why the courts, through statutory interpretation, address some major…
Minority Groups and Judicial Legitimacy: Group Affect and the Incentives for Judicial Responsiveness
This paper introduces a new perspective into the literature on judicial legitimacy by examining the incentives for courts to cater to a popular majority and offering a novel model of legitimacy that has consequences for judicial responsiveness. The account integrates into the literature classic research on how strategic social groups shape public opinion. I theorize that citizens use their perceptions of the judiciary’s support for various social…
Ascriptive Characteristics and Perceptions of Impropriety in the Rule of Law: Race, Gender, and Public Assessments of Whether Judges Can Be Impartial
Perceptions of procedural fairness influence the legitimacy of the law and because procedures are mutable, reforming them can buttress support for the rule of law. Yet legal authorities have recently faced a distinct challenge: accusations of impropriety based on theirascriptivecharacteristics (e.g., gender, ethnicity). We study the effect of these traits in the context of the U.S. legal system, focusing on the conditions under which citizens per…
The Conditional Effectiveness of Legislative Threats: How Court Curbing Alters the Behavior of (Some) Supreme Court Justices
The separation-of-powers literature focuses on how the preferences of one branch constrain the behavior of its counterparts. Yet, in much of this work, scholars do not address how responsive behavior varies across particular members. Focusing on Court curbing legislation in Congress, we develop a model of heterogeneous responsiveness. Our theory identifies two distinct mechanisms that underpin responsiveness in judicial behavior, implying that th…
Restraining the Court: Assessing Accounts of Congressional Attempts to Limit Supreme Court Authority
We propose a multilevel account of legislative Court curbing in order to assess existing explanations as to why such proposals come about. We argue that although Court curbing is commonly seen as the result of institutional conflict between Congress and the Supreme Court, it is best understood as a product of three interrelated factors: the individual motivations on the part of lawmakers, the partisan context in which they operate, and institutio…
Disagreeable Rhetoric and the Prospect of Public Opposition: Opinion Moderation on the U.S. Supreme Court
Elite rhetoric is an important aspect of democracy, and understanding why elites alter their rhetorical tone is vital to understanding the nature of public–elite interaction. In this paper, we identify the conditions under which insulated elites respond to public opinion by changing the amount of disagreeable rhetoric they emphasize. We examine Supreme Court opinions and theorize that the majority limits the use of disagreeable rhetoric—language …
Negative Media Coverage of the Supreme Court: The Interactive Role of Opinion Language, Coalition Size, and Ideological Signals
Objective We offer a novel consideration of how judicial behavior influences Court coverage, examining when the media use negative language to cover the Supreme Court, and the consequences of this portrayal. Methods Regression analysis to examine over 1,000 news articles from 29 diverse outlets covering rulings from the 2014 term, using text‐based measures of the Court and media's negative coverage. Results We find that the Court sends an importa…
Blurring Institutional Boundaries: Judges’ Perceptions of Threats to Judicial Independence
The legislature wields multiple tools to limit judicial power, but scholars have little information about how judges interpret variant threats and which they find most concerning. To provide insight, we conduct original interviews regarding legislative threats to courts with over two dozen sitting federal judges, representing all tiers of the federal judiciary. We find that judges have a nuanced understanding of threats and tend to identify compo…
How Identity Politics Polarizes Rule of Law Opinions
Cognitive Heuristics, Inter-Institutional Politics, and Public Perceptions of Insulated Institutions: The Case of the U.S. Supreme Court
How do citizens form perceptions about the ideological priorities of insulated institutions? Currently, there is little consensus on how or even whether citizens form such views. Focusing on the Supreme Court, I argue that perceptions of institutional ideology are influenced by an inter-institutional heuristic, or the popular perception that the president directly and indirectly influences the Court’s ideological direction. Using a multiple metho…
Do Americans perceive diverse judges as inherently biased
Although women and minorities hold an increasing share of judgships in the United States, they remain underrepresented. We explore Americans’ perceptions of the bias of women and minority judges – one of the possible challenges to creating a diverse bench. We argue that prejudice against these groups manifests in a subtle way, in the belief that diverse judges cannot fairly adjudicate controversies that involve their ingroup. To test our theory, …
Stepping on Congress: Courts, Congress, and Interinstitutional Politics
Legislative enactment is only one step in the life of a law. How a law shapes public life after enactment is frequently the result of whether the judiciary interprets the provisions contained in a law and how courts reconcile provisions within and across laws. But the factors that determine whether the judiciary ends up playing such a role are not well understood. We investigate why the courts, through statutory interpretation, address some major…
The Rule of Law in Red and Blue: Affective Polarization and Support for Legal Institutions in the United States
A defining feature of democracies is an independent legal system, where elites and the public alike accept the broader legitimacy of its actions, even if they run counter to political preferences. Existing scholarship suggests that public support for rule of law institutions is rooted in perceptions of procedural fairness. However, amid increasing levels of affective polarization, we posit a partisan presidential heuristic wherein citizens’ views…
The Sources and Consequences of Political Rhetoric: Issue Importance, Collegial Bargaining, and Disagreeable Rhetoric in Supreme Court Opinions
How do political actors use rhetoric after an initial policy battle? We explore factors that lead Supreme Court justices to integrate disagreeable rhetoric into opinions. Although disagreeable language has negative consequences, we posit that justices pay this cost for issues with high personal significance. At the same time, we argue that integrating disagreeable rhetoric has a deleterious effect on the institution by reducing majority coalition…
Stepping on Congress: Courts, Congress, and Interinstitutional Politics
Legislative enactment is only one step in the life of a law. How a law shapes public life after enactment is frequently the result of whether the judiciary interprets the provisions contained in a law and how courts reconcile provisions within and across laws. But the factors that determine whether the judiciary ends up playing such a role are not well understood. We investigate why the courts, through statutory interpretation, address some major…
The Limits of Legitimacy: Dissenting Opinions, Media Coverage, and Public Responses to Supreme Court Decisions
When the U.S. Supreme Court announces a decision, reporters simplify and dramatize the complex legal issues by highlighting dissenting opinions and thus emphasizing conflict among the justices themselves. This often sensationalistic coverage fosters public controversy over specific rulings despite polls which show that Americans strongly believe in the Court's legitimacy as an institution. In The Limits of Legitimacy, Michael A. Zilis illuminates…
Disagreeable Rhetoric and the Prospect of Public Opposition: Opinion Moderation on the U.S. Supreme Court
Elite rhetoric is an important aspect of democracy, and understanding why elites alter their rhetorical tone is vital to understanding the nature of public–elite interaction. In this paper, we identify the conditions under which insulated elites respond to public opinion by changing the amount of disagreeable rhetoric they emphasize. We examine Supreme Court opinions and theorize that the majority limits the use of disagreeable rhetoric—language …
Blurring Institutional Boundaries: Judges’ Perceptions of Threats to Judicial Independence
The legislature wields multiple tools to limit judicial power, but scholars have little information about how judges interpret variant threats and which they find most concerning. To provide insight, we conduct original interviews regarding legislative threats to courts with over two dozen sitting federal judges, representing all tiers of the federal judiciary. We find that judges have a nuanced understanding of threats and tend to identify compo…
Minority Groups and Judicial Legitimacy: Group Affect and the Incentives for Judicial Responsiveness
This paper introduces a new perspective into the literature on judicial legitimacy by examining the incentives for courts to cater to a popular majority and offering a novel model of legitimacy that has consequences for judicial responsiveness. The account integrates into the literature classic research on how strategic social groups shape public opinion. I theorize that citizens use their perceptions of the judiciary’s support for various social…
Restraining the Court: Assessing Accounts of Congressional Attempts to Limit Supreme Court Authority
We propose a multilevel account of legislative Court curbing in order to assess existing explanations as to why such proposals come about. We argue that although Court curbing is commonly seen as the result of institutional conflict between Congress and the Supreme Court, it is best understood as a product of three interrelated factors: the individual motivations on the part of lawmakers, the partisan context in which they operate, and institutio…
The Conditional Effectiveness of Legislative Threats: How Court Curbing Alters the Behavior of (Some) Supreme Court Justices
The separation-of-powers literature focuses on how the preferences of one branch constrain the behavior of its counterparts. Yet, in much of this work, scholars do not address how responsive behavior varies across particular members. Focusing on Court curbing legislation in Congress, we develop a model of heterogeneous responsiveness. Our theory identifies two distinct mechanisms that underpin responsiveness in judicial behavior, implying that th…
The Sources and Consequences of Political Rhetoric: Issue Importance, Collegial Bargaining, and Disagreeable Rhetoric in Supreme Court Opinions
How do political actors use rhetoric after an initial policy battle? We explore factors that lead Supreme Court justices to integrate disagreeable rhetoric into opinions. Although disagreeable language has negative consequences, we posit that justices pay this cost for issues with high personal significance. At the same time, we argue that integrating disagreeable rhetoric has a deleterious effect on the institution by reducing majority coalition…
Cognitive Heuristics, Inter-Institutional Politics, and Public Perceptions of Insulated Institutions: The Case of the U.S. Supreme Court
How do citizens form perceptions about the ideological priorities of insulated institutions? Currently, there is little consensus on how or even whether citizens form such views. Focusing on the Supreme Court, I argue that perceptions of institutional ideology are influenced by an inter-institutional heuristic, or the popular perception that the president directly and indirectly influences the Court’s ideological direction. Using a multiple metho…
Negative Media Coverage of the Supreme Court: The Interactive Role of Opinion Language, Coalition Size, and Ideological Signals
Objective We offer a novel consideration of how judicial behavior influences Court coverage, examining when the media use negative language to cover the Supreme Court, and the consequences of this portrayal. Methods Regression analysis to examine over 1,000 news articles from 29 diverse outlets covering rulings from the 2014 term, using text‐based measures of the Court and media's negative coverage. Results We find that the Court sends an importa…
Brandon L. Bartels and Christopher D. Johnston. Curbing the Court: Why the Public Constrains Judicial Independence
Conventional wisdom once suggested that the Supreme Court could operate at a remove from the most bitter partisan battles. That is no longer the case. Since 2016, two election-year vacancies opened partisan fractures over the future of the Court, and a third vacancy heightened the stakes when the nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, was accused of sexual assault. In an era of stark polarization, it is fair to ask whether the Supreme Court’s legitimacy is se…
Do Americans perceive diverse judges as inherently biased
Although women and minorities hold an increasing share of judgships in the United States, they remain underrepresented. We explore Americans’ perceptions of the bias of women and minority judges – one of the possible challenges to creating a diverse bench. We argue that prejudice against these groups manifests in a subtle way, in the belief that diverse judges cannot fairly adjudicate controversies that involve their ingroup. To test our theory, …
Defying the Supreme Court: The Impact of Overt Resistance to Landmark Legal Rulings
Objective To explore the political impact of overt resistance to judicial rulings. Existing approaches to answering this question rely on a framework that overlooks important components of how resistance resonates in the modern era. Methods Focusing on the Supreme Court's ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges and resistance by local county clerks, we model the relationship between resistance and public opinion. We demonstrate that disobedience affected …
How Identity Politics Polarizes Rule of Law Opinions
Ascriptive Characteristics and Perceptions of Impropriety in the Rule of Law: Race, Gender, and Public Assessments of Whether Judges Can Be Impartial
Perceptions of procedural fairness influence the legitimacy of the law and because procedures are mutable, reforming them can buttress support for the rule of law. Yet legal authorities have recently faced a distinct challenge: accusations of impropriety based on theirascriptivecharacteristics (e.g., gender, ethnicity). We study the effect of these traits in the context of the U.S. legal system, focusing on the conditions under which citizens per…
The Rule of Law in Red and Blue: Affective Polarization and Support for Legal Institutions in the United States
A defining feature of democracies is an independent legal system, where elites and the public alike accept the broader legitimacy of its actions, even if they run counter to political preferences. Existing scholarship suggests that public support for rule of law institutions is rooted in perceptions of procedural fairness. However, amid increasing levels of affective polarization, we posit a partisan presidential heuristic wherein citizens’ views…
Supreme Court Legitimacy in a New Media Era: Judicial Legitimacy, Polarization, and the Changing Media Landscape
The media environment has changed dramatically in the last 25 years. “New media” sources now dominate the landscape, although there has been very little systematic work on such coverage, particularly as it applies to courts and the rule of law. We use a new tool—SCOTUSapp—to gather news stories spanning five-plus years from thousands of outlets. Specifically, we examine the negativity, simplicity, and ideological tenor of coverage as it relates t…
Pushback: The Political Fallout of Unpopular Supreme Court Decisions. By Dave Bridge
Democratic Institutions Under Threat: Corrosive Frames, Internet News, and the U.S. Supreme Court
Are democratic institutions under threat in the United States? We examine an understudied democratic bedrock: the judiciary and, in particular, the U.S. Supreme Court. We draw on data from “SCOTUSapp,” a tool that provides a database of 100,000+ news articles across thousands of unexamined sources. We find a new media environment where the Court receives attention from thousands of ideologically fragmented outlets. Additionally, some framings of …
Judicial and Constitutional Studies (18 works) · Political science (17 works) · Law (16 works) · Politics (15 works) · Supreme court (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Legal and Constitutional Studies (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (8 works) · Psychology (7 works)