Politico and other outlets are flogging a new poll from Marquette Law School released Tuesday found that 40% of adults approve of the Supreme Court’s actions, while 60% disapprove. This really isn’t news; it’s fake news in “The Sun is hot!” category by now. Gallup, which has been tracking the trust levels in American institutions for decades, wrote last September that “the 41% of U.S. adults who currently approve of how the Supreme Court is handling its job is statistically similar to the 40% to 43% ratings over the past two years. The court’s approval rating first fell to the record-low 40% in September 2021.” A single percentage point, obviously, is well within the margin for error in any poll and is not significant, and not significant means “not newsworthy.”
So the #1 villain in the ongoing destruction of the Supreme Court’s level of trust and approval among the public is…no surprise—our unethical, despicable, democracy-undermining news media. Since Roe v. Wade was finally knocked down by the Dobbs decision but even before, our “advocacy journalists,” or “journalists,” have made it their mission to erode public support for SCOTUS as part of their goal of forcing the Court to the ideological left so it can advance progressive agenda items that the Democratic Party can’t accomplish the way democracies are supposed to—you know, by passing constitutional laws.
Chronicles points out that the news media has been engaging in coordinated “oppo research” campaigns to discredit conservative justices for many years now, a practice unheard of , indeed inconceivable, not long ago. “Oppo or “opposition research” is used in politics to destroy political enemies,” writes Mark Judge. “Genuine ethical questions usually involve things like bribes and the abuse of power. Opposition researchers, on the other hand, find people you dated when you were 16 years old and get them to say nasty things about you. They then try and use those things to stir up controversy. They feed it to the media then try and personally destroy the targeted person to get them to step down from public life.”
Justice Alito has been, as chronicled recently on Ethics Alarms, the latest target of this assault (he authored the Dobbs majority opinion, see, so he’s evil), and it is stunning how many previously sane, fair and intelligent people have accepted the ridiculous premise that the flying of an upside-down U.S. flag over the Alito home four years ago should mandate his recusal from any case involving the election or Donald Trump. An objective and competent news media would be explaining to the public why this theory is ridiculous on its face. Instead, most outlets are deliberately—still!— presenting the flag story as a genuine scandal. Then, as that silliness fell flat, the next “scandal” was Justice Alito being polite to an undercover progressive documentary maker who secretly taped his responses to leading “I think this, what do you think?” questions at a social event. This week, NPR’s leading story two days ago was “Secret audio raises new questions about Supreme Court Justice’s impartiality,” a six minutes and 11 seconds report. The Hunter Biden guilty verdicts report in the same segment lasted 3:52.
#2 on the list of ethics miscreants is the Justices themselves. These are smart people, obviously, yet they somehow managed not to detect the shift in the political culture that placed them in the position of having no leeway for carelessness in maintaining the Court’s public trust and credibility. Perhaps they were lulled into complacency for the way the news media smiled and applauded at the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s constant signalling of her bias and political favorites. She was so feisty and cute! But she was also a liberal feminist Democrat, and if the SCOTUS Justices didn’t realize double standards were in play, they were naive; negligently so, in fact.
Clarence Thomas’s unforgivable social and financial entanglements with conservative billionaire Harlan Crow is in a different category. His conduct, including his deceptive failure to properly disclose the various details of their engagements, would be unethical and serious in any political setting, by any Justice at any time in the Court’s history. Yes, Pro Publica, the left-biased ethics watchdog organization, obviously has had Thomas in its crosshairs for years. However, the group’s investigations have been well-documented: just because Pro Publica has an agenda doesn’t make what it discovers pursuing that agenda is invalid.
The third responsible party for the Supreme Court’s declining status in popular opinion is the American public. Almost none of them read the Court’s decisions; they don’t understand the law; they don’t comprehend what the function of the Court is and how it is supposed to work with the other two branches of government. The “approve” of the Court when they “agree” with a Court decision, but since they do not know or consider the contexts of SCOTUS decisions, their opinions of those decisions are neither informed nor competent. Thus they are susceptible to manipulation by politicians and media pundits who are either ignorant themselves or malign. MSNBC’s Joy Reid (Is there a more destructive, malicious and unprofessional opinion broadcaster anywhere?) recently said that she was certain the the Roberts Court was going to overturn Brown v. Board of Education. Remarkably, this prediction was even more absurd than her colleague Rachel Maddow’s recently expressed fear that a President Trump would have her arrested and “put in a camp.” The Rapture occurring on this year’s Fourth of July is more likely than the Supreme Court overturning Brown. My being voted Hip-Hop Artist of the Year at the Grammys is more likely. Spuds, my dog delivering William McKinley’s second Inaugural address in Portuguese is more likely. Yet there are members of the public who listen to and believe Joy Reid. True, they are morons, but there are a lot of them out there.
Finally, our terrible education system shares blame for the decline of trust in the Supreme Court. It is the 4th offender. Efficient and responsible civic education would provide us with better journalists and a public better able to understand not only the Court but its decisions and the reasons for them.
Ethics Alarms 
Wouldn’t you agree that the SCOTUS that decided Roe v. Wade is responsible for a lot of this mess? That poorly reasoned ruling set up the progressive outrage that followed it being overturned, finally. Personally, every decision that (a) reduces the federal government’s unconstitutional reach into our lives, or (b) reaffirms our God-given rights guaranteed by the US Constitution, bolsters my “approval” of the Court. You know, when they’re doing their damn job and not legislating from the bench.
That SCOTUS and every one up until Dobbs. Objective lawyers will admit that Roe was crap, but the progressives among them (and some conservatives) argue that it was too late to overturn Roe, that it was established precedent and should have been protected by stare decisus. Roe was written during a liberal upsurge in the wake of an activist court that legislated routinely without much criticism. Blackmun, the weak supposedly conservative Justice appointed by Nixon, was caught up in the Zeitgeist. The Court could have struck down Roe any time it had the guts to as just bad law, but didn’t, and every year it didn’t made Roe more impregnable.
Didn’t Justice Brown-Jackson, in her confirmation hearings, signal that stare decisus – or, at least, the Progressive version of it that believes that previous SCOTUS decisions that they approve of (like Roe) are settled law, never to be overturned – is so important that cases like Plessy v Ferguson shouldn’t have been toppled by Brown?
As I know of no other justice on the current Court who has ever argued such a thing, methinks Joy should be reminded how unlikely overturning Brown is. But she won’t be and it wouldn’t work anyway because Joy’s job is as a propagandist.
Gorsuch argued this quite emphatically in his confirmation hearing.
And yes, the Plessy exception always comes to mind when the argument is made Stare decisus is desirable but not absolute.
Why do pollsters ask such questions. Approval or disapproval is like the tide it depends on which way the court moves.
I wonder how many citizens have ever read with understanding SCOTUS rulings. I wonder how many people even understand what it means to be an Originalist or even know that the court is not there to make new “rights”. Rights either exist or they do not and government does not give us rights. Government is there to protect our inalienable rights. Inalienable rights are those that do not impose a burden on others. That is not to say that you cannot be offended by my exercise of that right. We have no right the medical care we only choose to provide payments to health care providers.
The American people have been duped into believing that the SCOTUS is there to ordain rights or take them away from those with whom they disagree as you said by the media.
I understand your sentiment about the Justices have failed to prevent the appearance of impropriety. I myself would expect Thomas to recuse himself on cases that have a direct impact on his billionaire buddy or any person within six degrees of separation himself or his buddy. With that said, the court’s role is to arbitrate rights not decide facts. If a justice is consistent in his or her judicial reasoning you cannot argue that the justice was corrupted by some external relationship. Anyway that is how I interpret Thomas and Ginsburg’s activities.
Wading through a judicial ruling or a dissent takes fortitude. In many cases, a working knowledge of both statutory and common law is required to understand the court’s reasoning so it is understandable that the average Joe does not read them. Before the public can run they must learn to walk so it would be a benefit if the clerks put together a Cliff notes type of product explaining the rationale for how the court went one way or another.
Give someone the ruling on the abortion pill and see if they approve of the court.
Then give that same person the bump stock ruling and see if they approve of the court.
My ox or your ox?
Exactly. So more people “disapprove” of the Court on both sides.