The U.S. Supreme Court and Society in Gerald Rosenberg's The Hollow Hope

In his book The Hollow Hope, Gerald Rosenberg mentions that it is difficult for the Supreme Court to exert any significant influence on the process of social reform in the U.S. More often than not, a certain ruling by the Supreme Court has little effect or even a detrimental effect on a social movement by weakening its supporters who think that they have achieved significant victory and strengthening its opponents who feel the urgency to rally to defeat it or to defend against it. Without the influence of the political establishment and aggressive participation on the part of social activists, the best the highest national court can achieve is to provide stronger legislative grounds for an already existing social trend.

This function of the Supreme Court is reflected in the June 2002 ruling in the case of Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, involving the state school vouchers program in Cleveland, Ohio. Under the Pilot Project Scholarship Program, parents were issued tuition assistance vouchers that they could use to take their children out of failing public schools and place them with participating private schools or public schools run under the supervision of separate private school boards. As a result, 96 percent of all students who took advantage of the voucher program had been placed in religiously oriented private schools, creating an outcry about the violation of the Establishment Clause in the Constitution aimed at separating church and state.