Constitutional Courts, Media and Public Opinion

Tell us a little bit about the book.

My book Constitutional Courts, Media and Public Opinion (Hart, 2023) explores the transformation of the institutional communication of some constitutional and supreme courts and its consequences in terms of courts’ legitimacy and relationship with media and public opinion. It addresses the challenges and risks arising from the courts’ increased proximity to citizens and their alleged intent to pursue popular support as a source of legitimacy. The book also adopts a normative approach and formulates some proposals to help courts prevent or counter criticism and, therefore, preserve their legitimacy in the legal system.

The book adopts an interdisciplinary approach: it analyses the topic from the perspective of comparative public law but also considers the contribution that communication and journalism studies have provided to the study of the interdependencies and conflicting visions in the relationship of courts with media and the public, discussing ‘when’ and ‘how’ courts or their judgements become ‘news’ and the challenges of reporting on long and specialised texts such as judgements. It also explores the conclusions that sociology and political theory have reached on public opinion, questioning its notion and constitutive elements in order to illuminate the relationship of public opinion with unelected bodies such as constitutional courts.

What inspired you to take up this project?

The book is the outcome of a long reflection I started in early 2019 when invited to report on the relationship between the Italian Constitutional Court and public opinion at a conference at the University of Turin.

At that time, the Italian Court had recently hired a new Head of Communication and deeply changed its institutional communication by increasing the use of traditional means of communication (press releases and press meetings) and by developing new initiatives “to know and be known”, as the former President of the Court, Giorgio Lattanzi, declared. The new developments had attracted great attention from scholars who questioned the opportunity for the Court to relinquish its traditional reluctance to engage in dialogue with citizens.

When I started exploring the topic, as a comparative constitutional law scholar, I also asked myself whether the Italian Court was alone on its new path of institutional communication. I realised that despite the many differences among constitutional courts (related to the models of constitutional justice or the belonging to different legal traditions), when it comes to institutional communication, the landscape is pretty much the same, and there are striking similarities in the solutions and initiatives developed by the courts ‘to meet people at their doorstep’.

Although I started my comparative research focusing on the new developments in the institutional communication of constitutional courts, the idea of addressing the relationship between non-political bodies and public opinion had lingered in my mind since 2011 when I published a book on the accountability of the Italian Head of State (Presidente della Repubblica) in a comparative perspective. In that research, I concluded that due to the many difficulties of holding a Head of State accountable through the traditional impeachment procedure, real accountability could only be ‘politically’ enforced through public opinion. This inspired me to rethink public opinion - which has been mainly addressed in connection with the representative state and elected bodies - and to examine it in its relationship with unlected bodies such as courts.

Whose work was influential on you throughout the project?

Many studies and research have influenced my work, and I am in debt to many scholars. Nonetheless, among the many books and articles which I found deeply inspiring, I would like to remember Jürgen Habermas’ seminal work on the transformation of the public sphere and the book edited by Richard Davis and David Taras on the relationship between justices and journalists.

I am also grateful to the Heads of Communication of the Courts I interviewed while working on the book. They offered me the opportunity to look at the topic from a different perspective and inspired me to address the contribution of media and journalism studies to the study of the media-courts relationship.

What challenges did you face in writing the book?

As the institutional communication of courts has undergone profound and interesting transformations worldwide, the first difficulty was the selection of jurisdictions to focus on. I address in the book three civil law constitutional courts (the German Federal Constitutional Court, the French Conseil Constitutionnel and the Italian Constitutional Court) and three common law supreme courts (the UK Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of Canada and the Supreme Court of the United States). All the courts share the common belonging to the Western constitutional tradition and enjoy established prestige and high levels of public trust. I argue that, given the narrow relationship between institutional communication and the public perception of courts, the similarities concerning these aspects are significant for the comparative analysis. At the same time, the mutual interdependence between courts and the press makes it essential to compare jurisdictions that share similar levels of constitutional guarantees of freedom of the press and expression.

At the same time, another main challenge was to keep up with the new developments in the institutional communication of constitutional courts. As courts have developed an incredible amount of strategies and solutions to get closer to citizens and to address different audiences in the last few years, I found it challenging to offer an updated and comprehensive overview of their institutional communication.

What do you hope to see as the book’s contribution to academic discourse and constitutional or public law more broadly?

As the relationship of constitutional courts with the media and public opinion as an output of courts have been largely unexplored in constitutional and comparative public law studies, I hope that my book could contribute to a better understanding of the institutional communication of courts and its effects in terms of courts’ role and legitimacy. I argue that criticism levelled against the new communication of courts is related to the perspective that dominates research on public opinion, especially to its emphasis on the relationship between public opinion, democracy and the legitimacy of elected bodies.

At the same time, I hope that my book could foster debate within constitutional courts on how to address the challenges and prevent the risks of institutional communication. In the last chapter, I advance some proposals to provide guidance to Chief Justices – as ambassadors of their courts - and courts’ members, arguing that the proposal of introducing regulation could only offer a partial answer to the concerns raised by the new course of communication of constitutional courts.

What’s next?

In my book, I focus on the communication of courts without addressing the Justices’ and Chief Justices’ personal perceptions of the changes that occurred in the relationship of their institutions with media and public opinion.

At the same time, the effects of the communication strategies and initiatives in terms of public knowledge and awareness, as well as the appreciation they have received from journalists, have largely remained in the background. I wish to turn my attention to these topics in the coming years.

For more information and to purchase the book, click here. Use the code GLR BD8 for a 20% discount.

Author Interviews