In a CDDRL research seminar held on January 8, 2026, Neil Malhotra, Professor of Political Economy at Stanford Graduate School of Business and courtesy professor of political science, presented his upcoming book Majority Opinions: The Political Consequences of an Out of Step Supreme Court, co-authored with Stephen Jessee and Maya Sen. The project examines how the Supreme Court’s alignment with public opinion shapes its legitimacy, approval, and vulnerability to reform. Malhotra emphasized that the book does not make normative claims about whether the Supreme Court should reflect public opinion but rather offers a positive political science account of how closely the Court tracks public preferences and how that distance shapes legitimacy, approval, and political response. 

As discussed by Malhotra, this project began as a result of changes in survey research methodology, shifting from face-to-face and telephone surveys to large-scale internet-based data collection. While these advances were used to study public opinion with respect to Congress and the President, there was a clear gap in applying this approach to the Supreme Court. Hence, starting in 2020, his team partnered with YouGov to conduct annual surveys each spring, prior to  Supreme Court decisions, asking respondents how they would rule on major cases scheduled for that term. Respondents were also asked to predict how they believed the Court would decide. 

To analyze these responses, Malhotra employs ideal point estimation, mapping respondents, partisan groups, and the Court itself onto a liberal-conservative scale. The data showed that the Court was closely aligned with the median voter in 2020, but its ideological position shifted to the right following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her replacement by Amy Coney Barrett. But in later years, the Court shifted back to the middle following public backlash.

As Malhotra highlighted, rather than asking about constitutional law and legal reasoning, respondents were presented with the policy consequences of cases. For example, in the Bostock case, participants were asked whether it should be legal or illegal for employees to be fired based on sexual orientation, followed by a question asking how they believed the Supreme Court would rule. The data revealed substantial variation across cases. Some issues showed clear partisan polarization, while others reflected broad agreement across parties.

The presentation then turned to public perceptions of the Court. Malhotra showed that respondents are generally poor at predicting Supreme Court outcomes, correctly guessing decisions only slightly more than half the time. This pattern is explained largely by projection, as individuals tend to assume the Court will rule in line with their own preferences. Because the Court has recently leaned conservative, this projection makes Republicans appear more accurate than Democrats.

Finally, Malhotra distinguished between approval and legitimacy, emphasizing the importance of separating the two concepts. Approval reflects short-term evaluations of the Court’s performance and is highly responsive to disagreement with Court decisions. By contrast, legitimacy deals with the public’s belief in the Court’s rightful role as an institution and proves more stable, though still negatively affected when the Court consistently differs from public opinion. As discussed, this difference matters because declining legitimacy can give political elites room to challenge compliance with Court rulings, threatening the rule of law.

Malhotra concluded by situating the project within a broader historical perspective. The book examines moments when the Supreme Court faced severe backlash and subsequently moderated its behavior, including resistance following Brown v. Board of Education. These cases illustrate how threats to enforcement and public acceptance can shape judicial decision-making over time, depicting the political consequences of a Court that moves out of step with the public.

The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is pleased to invite applications from pre-doctoral students at the write-up stage and from post-doctoral scholars working in any of the four program areas of democracy, development, evaluating the efficacy of democracy promotion, and rule of law. The application cycle for the 2026-2027 academic year will be open from Monday, September 22, 2025, through Thursday, December 4, 2025.

Our goal is to provide an intellectually dynamic environment that fosters lively exchange among Center members and helps everyone to do excellent scholarship. Fellows will spend the academic year at Stanford University focusing on research and data analysis as they work to finalize and publish their dissertation research while connecting with resident faculty and research staff at CDDRL.

Pre-doctoral fellows must be enrolled currently in a doctoral program or equivalent through the time of intended residency at Stanford and must be at the dissertation write-up (post course work) phase of their doctoral program. Post-doctoral fellows must have earned their Ph.D. within 3 years of the start of the fellowship, or plan to have successfully defended their Ph.D. dissertations by July 31, 2026.

In addition to our regular call for applications, CDDRL invites applications for the Gerhard Casper Fellow in Rule of Law for 2026-27. We welcome research on any aspect of rule of law, including judicial politics, criminal justice, and the politicization of judicial institutions. We are an interdisciplinary center; candidates from any relevant field (i.e. the social sciences, law) are welcome to apply. The Gerhard Casper Fellow will be part of CDDRL’s larger cohort of pre- and postdoctoral fellows. Please apply through the CDDRL fellowship application process and indicate that you would like to be considered for the Gerhard Casper Rule of Law Fellowship.

In 2025, the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) celebrated the 20th year of its Fisher Family Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program. This summer, 27 democracy leaders from across the developing world convened at Stanford for an intensive three-week training focused on democracy, good governance, and rule of law reform. Chosen from a highly competitive applicant pool, the fellows represent a diverse range of professional backgrounds and geographical regions, spanning civil society, public service, social enterprise, media, and technology. Launched in 2005, the program was previously known as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program. It was renamed in 2023 in recognition of a gift from the Fisher family — Sakurako (Sako), ‘82, and William (Bill), MBA ‘84 — that endowed the program and secured its future.

Fellows were instructed by a leading Stanford faculty team composed of FSI Director and former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul; CDDRL Mosbacher Director Kathryn Stoner; Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow Francis Fukuyama; Senior Fellow in Global Democracy Larry Diamond; and Erik Jensen, Lecturer in Law at Stanford Law School on new institutional models and frameworks to enhance their ability to promote good governance, accountable politics, and find new ways to achieve economic development in their home countries.

Esteemed guest lectures were also presented by individuals from the greater FSI and Stanford communities, as well as by Damon Wilson, President of the National Endowment for Democracy; Joshua Achiam, Head of Mission Alignment at OpenAI; Austin Mejia, Product Manager and Head of AI for Wearables at Google and a founding member of the AI for Developing Countries Forum, which advocates for equitable AI development globally; and various speakers from the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, the leading think tank focused on the most critical economic and policy issues facing the nine-county Bay Area region.

During the program, the fellows delivered "TED"-style talks during our Fellow Spotlight Series, sharing personal stories about the struggles in their home countries, stories of their fight for justice, equality, and democracy, and stories of optimism and endurance. You can watch their talks in the playlist below: