My MSNBC colleague Jordan Rubin summarized matters nicely in a single sentence: “As if there isn’t enough going on with Election Day just weeks away, the Supreme Court is starting a new term.”
But as the high court and its dominant conservative majority get back to work and consider a lengthy list of important cases, the justices aren’t exactly winning any popularity contests. The Hill reported last week:
Public trust in the Supreme Court is at a record low, with more than half of Americans disapproving of the nation’s highest court since its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, a new survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania showed. The survey, conducted from July 12 to August 12, found that 56 percent of Americans disapprove somewhat of the court, saying they either trust it “a little” or “not at all.”
The same national research found, “Asked how much, if at all, do you trust the court to act in the best interest of people like you, 1 in 3 people (34%) in August say ‘not at all’” up from 30% in May. In a 2005 APPC survey, only 7% did ‘not at all’ trust the court, which shows a stunning increase in distrust over the past two decades.” (Click the link for additional information on the survey’s methodology and margins of error.)
It’s tempting to assume that the justices won’t care since they’re not in elected positions, but as regular readers know, it was a few years ago when Justice Amy Coney Barrett made a public appearance in which the conservative jurist declared, “My goal today is to convince you that this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks.”
Last year, Justice Brett Kavanaugh made similar comments, insisting that the Supreme Court is “an institution of law not of politics, not of partisanship.” The conservative added that he believes that the current lineup of justices has succeeded in “deciding cases based on law and not based on partisan affiliation and partisanship.”
Apparently, those declarations aren’t persuading much of the American mainstream, as the data from the Annenberg Public Policy Center helps show.
Before anyone says, “Sure, but this is just one poll,” let’s not forget just how common results like these have been over the last couple of years. It was just last month, for example, when the Pew Research Center found favorable views of the high court mired in record lows.
Two months earlier, The Associated Press reported on the results of its new national poll, which found that a clear majority of Americans believe the current justices are “more likely to be guided by their own ideology rather than serving as neutral arbiters of government authority.”
A Quinnipiac University poll released last summer also found that 70% of Americans think that Supreme Court justices are too influenced by politics. Around the same time, an NBC News poll found the high court’s standing at the lowest point “since NBC News began measuring public sentiment about the court” more than 30 years ago.
In 2021, a national Grinnell College/Selzer poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans agree that politics drives Supreme Court rulings — and people from different parties answered the same question in roughly the same way. “This is a nightmare scenario for Chief Justice John Roberts, who has sought to protect the court’s reputation as an apolitical institution,” Grinnell College National Poll Director Peter Hanson said at the time. “The court faces a public convinced that its decisions are about politics rather than the Constitution.” The tarnishing of the Supreme Court — its credibility, its integrity and its reputation — has unfolded episodically over the course of several years. When far-right justices issue regressive and reactionary rulings, the problem gets worse. When far-right justices get caught up in indefensible ethics controversies, the problem gets worse. When far-right justices deliver political speeches, the problem gets worse. When far-right justices do favors for political allies, the problem gets worse. There’s no reason to assume conditions will improve any time soon. Not only will Republican-appointed justices continue to issue reactionary rulings, but figures such as Justice Neil Gorsuch will continue to sit down with conservative media personalities while promoting his recent book, reinforcing the obvious impression that he’s aligned ideologically with the right. 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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