A few weeks ago, Gallup released the results of a national survey that found Americans’ confidence in the nation’s judiciary had reached a record low: Only 35% of the country said they have confidence in the courts, down from 59% as recently as 2020.
Contextualizing the poll, Gallup’s analysis added, “Few countries and territories have seen larger percentage-point drops in confidence in the judiciary (over a similar four-year span) than the U.S. These include Myanmar (from 2018 to 2022) overlapping the return to military rule in 2021, Venezuela (2012-2016) amid deep economic and political turmoil, and Syria (2009-2013) in the runup to and early years of civil war, and others that have experienced their own kinds of disorder in the past two decades.”
It was against this backdrop that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts soon after issued an annual end-of-year report, complaining of criticisms that he characterized as unwarranted. “Unfortunately, not all actors engage in ‘informed criticism’ or anything remotely resembling it,” the conservative jurist wrote.
While I can appreciate Roberts’ concerns about the high court’s institutional reputation, if he wants to better understand why public confidence is faltering to historic degrees, there’s no shortage of evidence for the chief justice to consider. Take the latest NBC News report, for example.
Justice Samuel Alito confirmed Wednesday that he took a phone call from Donald Trump one day before the president-elect asked the Supreme Court to halt his upcoming sentencing, but insisted that the case was not discussed. Alito said in a statement that they spoke Tuesday afternoon after one of his former law clerks, William Levi, “asked me to take a call from President-elect Trump regarding his qualifications to serve in a government position.”
So let me see if I have this straight. According to the official version of events, Trump wanted to speak to the Supreme Court conservative on Tuesday about an applicant for a job in his incoming administration. As The New York Times’ report noted, it’s unclear why the president-elect would personally “make a call to check references, a task generally left to lower-level aides.”
The two men did, in fact, chat — again, according to the official version of events — and one day later, Trump’s lawyers filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court, as part of a larger effort to delay sentencing in the Republican’s criminal case in New York.
According to Alito, the case was not a part of their conversation.
To be sure, I’ve seen no evidence to the contrary. That said, Alito doesn’t exactly have a deep reservoir of credibility he can turn to in response to his latest controversy.
We are, after all, talking about a sitting justice who has earned a reputation as the Supreme Court’s most unyielding ideologue, who has delivered a series of overtly political speeches, who’s issued public endorsements of a conservative advocacy group’s work, who thought it’d be a good idea to defend the Supreme Court’s integrity at a pro-Trump organization exactly two weeks before the 2022 midterm elections, who’s appeared a bit too cozy with The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, and who’s declared his indifference to congressional oversight in ways that were panned as “stunningly wrong.” And did I mention the justice’s flag controversies? Because they’re another piece of the same unsightly mosaic. Only about a third of Americans have confidence in their own country’s judiciary, but there’s no reason to assume that number can’t drop further. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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