Trust in the (Measures of Legitimacy of) Courts

Document Type

Research Article

Abstract

Judicial legitimacy, often conceptualised as ‘diffuse support’, signifies the public’s enduring goodwill toward courts, even in the face of unpopular decisions. However, the use of ‘trust in courts’ as a measure of legitimacy remains contested. Several scholars have argued that trust measures approval of the court’s specific decisions rather than long-term fidelity to the court. This paper reexamines the role of trust in measuring judicial legitimacy, arguing that its exclusion may be unwarranted and even detrimental to our understanding of courts. Through examining previously analysed survey data as well as original data from an online survey, I show that trust is a valid indicator of legitimacy. I further demonstrate, using a survey experiment, that framing effects are limited and show that most common phrasings of questions about trust in the judiciary behave similarly, allowing them to be used in cross-national comparisons. These findings demonstrate that researchers can leverage commonly asked public survey questions about trust in courts to understand judicial legitimacy across the world.

DOI

10.1177/1065912926143539

Publication Date

3-16-2026

Journal

Political Research Quarterly

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