Doug Mataconis has a post at OTB in which he muses about why public opinion of the Supreme Court has deteriorated:
So, what’s the cause of the public’s decline in approval for the Court? The easy answer that many will jump to is that it’s related to the decisions that the Court has made, but it strikes me that this explanation doesn’t make sense, or at least that it’s not entirely complete.
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If it was public dissatisfaction with the Court’s work that was the cause of this dip in approval, then one would have expected to see a significant drop off in the aftermath of the decision in Bush v. Gore. Instead, public opinion remained relatively consistent until 2004-2005 when it began dropping, and indeed reached a point in 2005 where slightly more people disapproved of the Court than approved.
Consider the chart above. If the reason for the decreasing approval of the Court is that the Court has been captured by a cabal of right wing ideologues, how do you explain the increasing number of 5-4 decisions in the Stone, Vinson, and Burger courts? You might argue that the Court is being whipsawed between left wing ideologues and right wing ideologues but I don’t believe that explains the change, either.
I think that most of the decline in mostly due to a decline in respect for authority that’s been ongoing for generations. In that context that 44% of the people continue to approve of the Supreme is astonishingly high by comparison with the Congress’s approval rating of under 17%. People even disapprove of the performance of their own Congressmen these days.
I doubt that the decline in the SCOTUS’s approval has anything to do with the actual performance of the Court. I’m going out on a limb here but I suspect that 99% of the people don’t read Supreme Court rulings or have any basis of understanding for evaluating the performance of the Court. Basically, they’re being told by other people—news media, pundits, and all sorts of others that the Court is acting out of ideological bias so they believe that’s the case. It’s become cool to disrespect the Supreme Court. That culminated with the president’s public criticism of the Supreme Court during his State of the Union address.
If the president doesn’t respect the Supreme Court, why should the rest of us?
As I said at OTB, outside of the legal profession, who really believes that the Supreme Court Justices are making impartial interpretations of the law? Lifetime appointments were supposed to make the judiciary more independent, but they have made them as politicized as any political office, if not more.
Steve
By far the loudest, longest attacks on the SCOTUS have come as a consequence of Roe v. Wade. That attack from the right dwarfs anything we’ve seen in modern times. That set the table for more public awareness of the court and lowered the bar for criticizing the court. Before that the second greatest outrage was also from the right on Brown v. Board of Education. Attacks from the left – even over Bush v. Gore – have been pop-guns by comparison.
This politicization becomes an out of control spiral as the confirmation hearings become contests between grandstanding Senators and lying-through-their-teeth nominees. It is impossible to watch confirmation hearings and not come away convinced that we are engaged in politics not law. The spectacle of nominees abasing themselves to get the job destroys any respect that we might be inclined to offer. “Why no, Senator, I’ve never even heard of Roe v. Wade let alone formed an opinion.” Really? That’s what we’re meant to respect?
A politicized court populated entirely now by justices who have boldly lied to the American people, suffers the same abuse as any other political institution in these polarized times. Not surprising.
Why are we polling public opinion of an institution of life time appointees who are charged with upholding the law over the populist view? Should the court be concerned that a coup of the judicial branch will occur if the justices don’t improve their collective image?
I agree that a growing lack of respect for authority is largely to blame. An increase in the partisan vitrole that has become part of the selection and confirmation process doesn’t help.