Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Headlines frame Supreme Court rulings

Headlines frame Supreme Court rulings
Getty Images

Kevin Frazier will join the Crump College of Law at St. Thomas University as an Assistant Professor starting this Fall. He currently is a clerk on the Montana Supreme Court.

“Congress fails to protect waterlands.”


“Senate continues to gridlock on women’s rights.”

“House punts on campaign finance…again”

There are alternative headlines that could have been written before or soon after recent Supreme Court decisions. The media has instead reacted to cases like Sackett (narrowing the reach of the Waters of the United States) and Dobbs (overturning Roe v. Wade) by emphasizing the policy outcomes of the Court’s decision rather than analyzing the Court’s legal analysis and, perhaps more importantly, the absence of congressional action.

In fact, headlines have often framed the Court as a policy making body as if it has powers equal to or greater than Congress in that respect. For instance, AP's headline following the Sackett decision read "Supreme Court sharply limits federal government's ability to police pollution into certain wetlands." A more accurate and, admittedly, boring headline would have read “Supreme Court concludes that Clean Water Act does not protect wetlands unless they have a ‘continuous surface connection’ to regulated bodies of water.” Punchy? No. Accurate? Yes. Though media outlets may lament such a wordy and bland headline, they have a duty to inform citizens--not to enrage them. Headlines akin to the one used by AP ascribe more power to the Court than it actually wields. In doing so, these publications nudge the public to wrongly direct their political ire and energy.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

In an age of increasing competition among publishers, journalists have an understandable urge to write headlines and articles that tap into the public’s increasing frustration with the Supreme Court. By acting on that urge, the press has provided necessary and important coverage on things like questionable (likely unethical) judicial behavior. However, that urge has also prompted coverage of the Court and its members that distracts the public from failures of the other branches of government to fulfill their governing responsibilities.

For sake of fairness, let’s assume this distraction is unintentional and that a lack of legal knowledge rather than a desire for more clicks and eyeballs is causing this sort of reporting. Under that assumption, there’s an easy remedy: the employment of more lawyer-journalists. These lawyer-journalists could serve two functions: first, reorienting how the press covers the Supreme Court; and, second, educating the public on the law and, more broadly, our government.

Imagine if coverage of each and every Supreme Court opinion walked readers through the following aspects of the decision: the procedural history (how lower courts dealt with the case); the standard of review (how much deference the Supreme Court had to afford to the lower court’s decision); the relevant precedential cases (prior Supreme Court decisions that addressed the same or similar issues); and, the narrowness or breadth of the Supreme Court’s decision (whether the decision is confined to the facts before the court or will have ramifications in more contexts). This sort of information may not lend itself to a tweet but it will reduce the odds of the public perceiving the Court rather than Congress as the body responsible for drafting policy solutions to modern problems.

Full disclosure, I’m a lawyer, so I surely have a heightened appreciation for the nitty-gritty details of judicial opinions. But why should the public not be given the opportunity to learn about and grapple with those same details? Can’t journalism at once serve an informational and educational purpose?

Lawyers may prefer that you believe that they alone can understand the ins-and-outs of the law but that’s surely not the case--or, at least, it does not have to be. If more press outlets exercised editorial restraint and discipline by reporting on the Court in a structured and formulaic way, then the public could slowly but surely develop a deeper understanding of the role of the Court and the law, generally.

In short, current press coverage of the Court contributes to a misallocation of popular attention. Consider that in the wake of outrage of Court opinions, the Biden Administration launched a Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court that brought together scholars to review potential judicial reforms. Where’s the corresponding investigation into Congress? And, while we’re at it, the Executive Branch?

The press has an obligation to inform, not enrage; and to summarize, but not sensationalize. Recent Court coverage suggests the press has been learning toward the latter functions--this approach must come to an end for the good of our democracy. One small step in that direction would come from the inclusion of more lawyers in the newsroom and the adoption of a nuanced and detailed analysis of judicial opinions. The public deserves full and accurate information, the media can and should provide it.

Read More

Houses with price tags
retrorocket/Getty Images

Are housing costs driving inflation in 2024?

This fact brief was originally published by EconoFact. Read the original here. Fact briefs are published by newsrooms in the Gigafact network, and republished by The Fulcrum. Visit Gigafact to learn more.

Are housing costs driving inflation in 2024?

Yes.

The rise in housing costs has been a major source of overall inflation, which was 2.9% in the 12 months ending in July 2024.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' shelter index, which includes housing costs for renters and homeowners, rose 5.1% in the 12 months ending in July 2024.

Keep ReadingShow less
I Voted stickers
BackyardProduction/Getty Images

Voters cast ballots based on personal perceptions, not policy stances

The Fulcrum and the data analytics firm Fidelum Partners have just completed a nationally representative study assessing the voting intentions of U.S adults and their perceptions toward 18 well-known celebrities and politicians.

Fidelum conducted similar celebrity and politician election studies just prior to the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. Each of these found that perceptions of warmth, competence and admiration regarding the candidates are highly predictive of voting intentions and election outcomes. Given this, The Fulcrum and Fidelum decided to partner on a 2024 celebrity and politician election study to build upon the findings of prior research.

Keep ReadingShow less
Hand waving an American flag

"Freedom, a word that should inspire, has been distorted to justify the unchecked pursuit of individual interests at the expense of collective well-being," writes Johnson.

nicoletaionescu/Getty Images

Redefining America's political lingua franca

Johnson is a United Methodist pastor, the author of "Holding Up Your Corner: Talking About Race in Your Community" and program director for the Bridge Alliance, which houses The Fulcrum.

A seismic shift has occurred in America's race, identity and power discourse. Like tectonic plates beneath the Earth's surface, long-held assumptions are adjusting and giving way to a reimagined lingua franca for civic engagement. This revived language of liberation redefines the terms of debate. It empowers us to reclaim and reinvigorate words once weaponized principally against marginalized communities.

Keep ReadingShow less
Latino attendees of the Democratic National Convention

People cheer for the Harris-Walz ticket at the Democratic National Convention.

Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Harris’ nomination ‘hit a reset button’ for Latinas supporting Democrats

As the presidential race entered the summer months, President Joe Biden’s level of support among Latinx voters couldn’t match the winning coalition he had built in 2020. Among Latinas, a critical group of voters who tend to back Democrats at higher levels than Latinos, lagging support had begun to worry Stephanie Valencia, who studies voting patterns among Latinx voters across the country for Equis Research, a data analytics and research firm.

Then the big shake-up happened: Biden stepped down and Vice President Kamala Harris took his place at the top of the Democratic ticket fewer than 100 days before the election.

Valencia’s team quickly jumped to action. The goal was to figure out how the move was sitting with Latinx voters in battleground states that will play an outsized role in deciding the election. After surveying more than 2,000 Latinx voters in late July and early August, Equis found a significant jump in support for the Democratic ticket, a shift that the team is referring to as “the Latino Reset.”

Keep ReadingShow less