“The #Metoo movement... and the highly visible cases that are similar to Cosby (powerful men, similar patterns of behavior, multiple victims) make the environment one that is more supportive of the prosecution’s case."

Said Cornell Law School professor Valerie Hans, quoted in "Will the #MeToo Moment Shape the Cosby Case?" (NYT).

Also:

There has long been a debate on just how much judges are, or should be, swayed by public opinion. Justice Stephen G. Breyer of the United States Supreme Court said that listening to public opinion is “a road to perdition” for judges.

“We’re not there to be popular,” he added in a video that was posted on a public policy website, bigthink.com “We’re not there to decide according to the majority; we’re not there to decide according to what the press is going to write.”

Others, such as the Harvard law professor Michael Klarman have argued that certain landmark rulings like Brown v. Board of Education would never have been possible if judges had not been reflecting shifting social mores.