Americans last week followed news about the struggling economy and the resignation of Rep. Anthony Weiner from Congress more closely than other top stories, while the early stages of the 2012 presidential election led news coverage for this first time this year.

Two-in-ten (20%) say they followed reports about the condition of the U.S. economy most closely, while 16% followed developments in the Weiner scandal that closely, according to the latest weekly News Interest Index survey, conducted June 16-19 among 1,003 adults by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

About one-in-ten (11%) say news about the 2012 presidential election was their top story. Coverage of the potential candidates, driven in large part by the Republican debate in New Hampshire, accounted for 15% of coverage, according to a separate analysis by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ). Coverage of the economy made up 12% of the newshole, while Weiner’s resignation accounted for 9%. One week earlier, the Weiner story, including his acknowledgment that he had sent sexually-suggestive photos and messages online to at least six women, was the top story with 17% of coverage.

Romney Most Heard About GOP Candidate

With last week’s coverage focused on the June 13 GOP debate, about a quarter of the public (23%) say they followed news about possible candidates for the 2012 presidential elections very closely. One week earlier, 18% said they were tracking candidate news this closely.

Mitt Romney is clearly the candidate the public says they are hearing the most news about, while mentions of Sarah Palin have plummeted over the past two weeks. About a quarter (27%) offer Romney’s name when asked which candidate they have heard the most about recently. That rises to 36% among Republicans. During the first week of June, 22% of the public and 34% of Republicans said they were hearing the most about the former Massachusetts governor.

In early June, the public was about as likely to say they were hearing the most about Palin (20%), but mentions of the former Alaska governor have dropped to just 8%. Among Republicans, 11% currently name Palin, down from 20% in early June.

Smaller numbers offer other names; 5% each say they have heard the most about former Speaker Newt Gingrich or Rep. Michele Bachmann. Among Republicans, 6% say they heard the most about Bachmann, while 3% say they have heard the most about Gingrich. In mid-May, Gingrich and Donald Trump were the potential candidates the public was hearing the most about. Trump has since said he will not run.

Romney also received more coverage than other GOP contenders. According to PEJ’s analysis of election news, Romney was the lead newsmaker – featured in at least 50% of the story – in 19% of election stories. Gingrich, Bachmann and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty were each the lead newsmaker in about 8% of stories.

The Week’s News

About four-in-ten (39%) say they followed news about the U.S. economy very closely last week. That matches the number that said this one week earlier, amid continuing signs the recovery has slowed. News about the economy accounted for 12% of coverage.

Two-in-ten (20%) say they followed news about Weiner’s resignation very closely. Still, more than half (52%) say they followed this Washington scandal not too (24%) or not at all closely (28%). Partisans are about equally likely to say they followed this story very closely, as are men and women. The scandal accounted for 9% of coverage.

About a quarter (24%) say they very closely followed news about the debate in Washington over whether to raise the federal debt limit; 8% say this was their top story. Republicans are more likely to say they followed this news very closely than Democrats (30% vs. 20%). About a quarter of independents (24%) say they followed it as closely. The debate over the debt limit accounted for 2% of coverage, according to PEJ.

Nearly two-in-ten (18%) say they very closely followed news about the continuing anti-government unrest and violence in a number of Middle Eastern countries; 7% say this was the news they followed most closely. News about Middle East unrest made up 6% of coverage.

One-in-ten (10%) say they very closely followed news about the financial crisis and violent protests in Greece; 3% say this was the story they followed most closely. News about Greece’s financial situation accounted for 4% of the coverage analyzed by PEJ.

These findings are based on the most recent installment of the weekly News Interest Index, an ongoing project of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. The index, building on the Center’s longstanding research into public attentiveness to major news stories, examines news interest as it relates to the news media’s coverage. The weekly survey is conducted in conjunction with The Project for Excellence in Journalism’s News Coverage Index, which monitors the news reported by major newspaper, television, radio and online news outlets on an ongoing basis. In the most recent week, data relating to news coverage were collected June 13-19, and survey data measuring public interest in the top news stories of the week were collected June 16-19 from a nationally representative sample of 1,003 adults.

View the topline questionnaire and survey methodology at people-press.org.

The scandal that launched 1,000 puns — Rep. Anthony Weiner’s online exchange of explicit messages and images with a number of women — topped the news last week, registering as one of the biggest political scandal stories of the past four years.

From June 6-12, the saga accounted for 17% of the newshole measured by the News Coverage Index of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

That makes the Weiner saga the fourth-most covered scandal involving elected officials since PEJ began tracking news in January 2007.

The biggest political scandal of the last four and a half years was former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s corruption case (28%) — also known as “Blago-gate” — in which he allegedly tried to sell President Barack Obama’s former senate seat. No 2 was former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s admission that he used prostitutes (23%), followed quickly by his resignation from that office. News of former Idaho Sen. Larry Craig’s arrest for lewd behavior in an airport was the No. 3 scandal, at 18%. Craig ultimately pled guilty to lesser charges.

For the week, Weiner was easily the dominant newsmaker, appearing prominently in 13% of the week’s stories studied by PEJ — nearly tripling the coverage devoted to President Obama (5%).

The week’s No. 2 story was the economy (11% of the newshole) although coverage slipped markedly from the previous week (19%) when gloomy reports about the jobs and housing markets fueled the news. Last week, a mix of storylines contributed to the economic narrative.

The economy was followed closely by the continuing upheaval in the Middle East (11%). A big part of the story last week was the chaos in both Syria and Yemen, including reports that U.S. has become increasingly involved, targeting airstrikes at militants in the latter country.

Coverage of the presidential campaign dropped last week, filling 8% of the newshole compared with 12% the previous week. Last week’s coverage included former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum’s entry into the GOP field and the mass defections of staffers from Newt Gingrich’s troubled campaign. A related political story — the release of about 24,000 pages of Sarah Palin emails from her time as Alaska governor — filled another 3%.

The No. 5 subject, at 4%, was the raging Arizona wildfires that consumed an estimated half million acres in the eastern part of the state. The blazes were the latest in a series of natural and weather disasters that have proved to be major newsmakers in 2011.

Learn more about these stories by reading the full report at journalism.org.

A 57%-majority says elected officials just get caught more often because they are under greater scrutiny. About two-in-ten (19%), on the other hand, say elected officials have lower moral standards than ordinary Americans, according to the latest national survey conducted June 9-12 among 1,002 adults by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and The Washington Post.

Among the 19% who attribute the scandals to lower moral standards among elected officials, most (13% of the public) say that when people get into positions of power, they tend to lose their moral standards, while 4% say that politics attracts the kind of people who have lower moral standards.

There are only slight differences in opinion across political and demographic groups. Each attributes the number of sex scandals more to the level of scrutiny faced by officials than to lower moral standards by at least a two-to-one margin. For example, 55% of men and 59% of women say that elected officials involved in sex scandals get caught more often because they are under greater scrutiny.

There also is no difference in opinion between those following the current scandal involving Rep. Anthony Weiner very closely and those following this news less closely. Weiner has acknowledged sending sexual messages and photos to at least six women online.

Overall, 12% reject both of the options offered, answering neither or giving other reasons. Among those who offer an explanation, the most frequently cited refer to elected officials’ ego or arrogance.

View the topline questionnaire at people-press.org.

Generally, the issues matter most in voters’ judgments about presidential candidates, but personality, character and values are not far behind. This is especially the case in the primaries where differences between candidates of the same party tend to be modest.

Fully 62% of Republicans said they would be less willing to vote for a candidate who had committed adultery. For example, leadership and personal qualities were more important to Republican voters in New Hampshire in 2008 than positions on issues. And a victorious John McCain bested Mitt Romney from neighboring Massachusetts by a huge margin on the personal dimension — though there is no one way that voters size up the personal dimension.

In past Pew Research Center surveys, voters said that honesty is the single most important thing they wanted to know about a candidate. However, significant numbers also think that it is important to learn about a candidate’s openness, personal background and the candidate’s spouse.

With regard to a candidate’s personal life, divorce is not much of a consideration — it has been a long time since Gov. Nelson Rockefeller’s presidential aspirations were derailed by divorce. In 2007, just 9% of voters said that they would be less willing to vote for a divorced candidate. But adultery is another matter; as many as 39% said they would be less willing to vote for a candidate who had had an extra-marital affair.

Republicans are especially reluctant to vote for a candidate who has had an affair. Fully 62%  said they are less likely to do so. Many fewer Democrats, having stood by President Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal, drew that line. Only 25% said such a candidate would likely lose their vote.

As for spouses, in recent years first ladies have run ahead of their husbands in public opinion polls. Laura Bush was more popular than George W. Bush throughout much of his presidency. And now we see Michelle Obama with a higher favorability rating than the president’s. In fact, majorities of various Republican voting blocs, except for staunch conservatives, have a positive reaction to the first lady.

However, in some instances, public opinions of some first ladies have paralleled negative views of their husbands at difficult times. Nancy Reagan was criticized for a lavish lifestyle during the “Reagan recession,” and Hillary Clinton drew substantial criticism as an architect of a unpopular health care reform plan.

Read other debaters’ takes on how much voters care about a politician’s marital history and family life at the New York Times‘ Room for Debate discussion: “When Private Lives Become Public.”

These and related lawsuits raise complex constitutional questions that have been troubling American courts for more than a century: Do the First Amendment’s religion clauses — which guarantee religious liberty and prohibit all laws “respecting the establishment of religion” — bestow a unique legal status on religious organizations that puts some of their decisions and actions beyond the reach of civil laws? To put it another way, are legal disputes involving churches and other religious institutions constitutionally different from those involving their secular counterparts, and if so, how?¹

These questions have been raised in four different types of court cases — property disputes, employment of clergy, treatment or discipline of members, and misconduct by employees of religious organizations.

The first type of case involves property disputes within a religious organization. These conflicts often arise after an internal disagreement within a denomination prompts a congregation or congregations to split from the larger religious organization, leading to lawsuits over who owns church property, financial assets and even the name of the group. In recent years, a number of these cases have involved disputes over moral or social issues, such as whether to sanction same-sex marriages or accept openly gay and lesbian members of the clergy.

In the late 19th century, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that courts may resolve these types of property disputes by deferring to the religious body’s hierarchy or leadership, or, when appropriate, to a majority of the congregation (see Internal Property Disputes).²

But more than a century later, in 1979, the Supreme Court clarified this approach by holding that, in some circumstances, the First Amendment allows a court to apply the same legal principles to a church property dispute as it would apply to a similar lawsuit involving a secular group.³

The ongoing lawsuits involving divisions within the Episcopal Church over homosexuality provide a good example of how courts might reach different decisions depending on which of these approaches they decide to apply. On the one hand, if a court were to adjudicate such a dispute by deferring to church hierarchy, it would respect the decisions that had been made by the national and regional Episcopal Church bodies in determining which congregational faction is entitled to possession of church property. But if the court were to apply ordinary legal principles to the case, its decision would depend on the unique circumstances of each congregation, including the language of legal documents governing the property in question, such as the deed of title or the congregation’s articles of incorporation.

A second type of case also involves disputes within a religious organization, but instead of property, these cases relate specifically to the employment of clergy. Federal and state laws generally prohibit employers from discriminating against their employees on various bases, including race and gender. But many courts have found that the First Amendment exempts religious organizations from these anti-discrimination laws when they make employment decisions about their own clergy. For instance, the Roman Catholic Church is free to employ only men as priests. But the strength and extent of this exemption — known as the “ministerial exception” — is still uncertain because the U.S. Supreme Court has never expressly ruled on it, and lower courts often divide on exactly how to apply the doctrine. This uncertainty could soon end, however, as the high court has agreed to hear a ministerial exception case in the fall of 2011.

A third type of case involves religious organizations’ treatment of their members. This category includes a wide range of situations, such as lawsuits challenging a minister’s or congregation’s public chastisement of a current member. Courts have often held that the First Amendment allows civil authorities to resolve such disputes as long as the legal issues are not thoroughly entangled with core matters of religious doctrine. For example, courts may not review whether a particular member of a religious organization should have been excommunicated, but courts may determine whether the administrative body that took the action actually had the authority to do so under the religious group’s own rules.

A fourth type of case involves legal actions against a religious entity for the wrongdoing of one of its employees or a person otherwise affiliated with the institution. These cases often involve common legal actions, such as a lawsuit stemming from an automobile accident caused by a church employee. But these lawsuits also can involve very controversial issues, such as the criminal and civil cases that have been filed against dioceses and other entities within the Catholic Church for the actions of priests who have sexually abused minors. Courts generally have resolved such cases by applying the same principles of civil and criminal law to religious entities that they would apply to similar secular organizations.

Although the four types of cases raise different legal issues, court rulings on all these matters have been consistent regarding one important principle: The government must not regulate religious entities in any way that would require a judge or other government official to interpret religious doctrine or rule on theological matters. At times, this “hands-off” principle might require courts to treat religious organizations differently from their secular counterparts. For example, a court can easily rely on contract and corporate law to resolve a dispute between a secular company and one of its subsidiaries. However, it is more difficult to use these same legal precepts to resolve a dispute between the national denomination of a church and a local congregation in a fight over the qualifications for ordained ministry, such as whether noncelibate gays and lesbians may serve as ministers.

While the existence of the hands-off principle is well accepted, its precise constitutional source is not. Some courts have found that its source is the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause, which guarantees religious liberty. Other courts have located the principle in the First Amendment’s other religion clause, the Establishment Clause, which prohibits the government from promoting religion.⁴

Finally, some scholars and courts contend that the source of the hands-off approach is found in both religion clauses. But whatever its precise constitutional source, the hands-off principle is deeply entrenched in the nation’s constitutional tradition and is likely to continue to limit the government’s authority to regulate religious entities.

Download the Complete Report (PDF)

Read other analyses in the Pew Forum’s series on Religion and the Courts: The Pillars of Church-State Law.

_{1. Throughout this report, the term “churches” refers to churches, synagogues, temples, mosques and other houses of worship. Religious institutions include churches as well as other types of religious organizations that are exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.}

_{2. This is known as the “deference to hierarchy” approach because it requires courts to resolve internal church disputes by deferring to the rulings of the church’s highest authority on the matter.}

_{3. This is known as the “neutral principles” approach because it permits courts to apply ordinary legal principles independent of the religious organization’s beliefs and internal structure.}

_{4. For background, see the following reports by the Pew Forum: A Fluid Boundary: The Free Exercise Clause and the Legislative and Executive Branches (October 2008), and A Delicate Balance: The Free Exercise Clause and the Supreme Court (October 2007).}