By all appearances, Supreme Court justices care, at least a little, about public confidence and perceptions of their work. A few years ago, for example, 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.”
The comments reflected a larger goal: The more the Supreme Court’s dominant conservative majority positions the institution as a political force, the more some of its justices hope members of the public won’t believe their lying eyes.
Those efforts don’t appear to be working. The Associated Press reported this week 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.”
The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 7 in 10 Americans think the high court’s justices are more influenced by ideology, while only about 3 in 10 U.S. adults think the justices are more likely to provide an independent check on other branches of government by being fair and impartial.
It’s worth emphasizing for context that 70% of Americans don’t agree on much, but they apparently agree on this.
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. A Quinnipiac University poll released last summer, for example, 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.” All of these surveys, of course, pre-date the latest radical rulings from the high court. 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. It’s nice, I suppose, that some members of the bench want Americans to believe “this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks,” but they shouldn’t be surprised that so much of the public has come to the opposite conclusion. 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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