The raft of right-wing Supreme Court rulings we’ve seen over the past year has coincided with a steep drop in the public’s approval of the court.
Simply put: Americans don’t like the hyper-conservative decisions — which impact everything from abortion access and police misconduct to voting rights, gas emissions and gun safety — handed down by Republican-backed justices.
Conservative justices are sacrificing the legitimacy of the court in the eyes of the public in order to codify right-wing domination into law.
A new poll released Wednesday by Marquette University Law School found a mere 38% of adults approve of how the court is doing its job, compared to 61% who disapprove. Those numbers have essentially flipped in just a year’s time: In July 2021, a similar poll found the court had a 60% approval rating compared with 39% who disapproved.
But the court’s rulings have drastically altered our world in that time, and the Marquette poll is a sign that the court runs the risk of delegitimizing itself if it continues on the same path.
Lately, I’ve been thinking of this as a form of judicial self-immolation. For the unfamiliar, self-immolating is the act of setting yourself on fire in the name of a perceived greater cause. Conservative justices, for example, are sacrificing the legitimacy of the court in the eyes of the public in order to codify right-wing domination into law. They are setting our nation’s concept of an independent judiciary — in fact, the very concept of a supreme court — on fire to enact what amounts to a white, Christian nationalist view of America.
Conservatives are killing the court.








