Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
According to a Gallup poll taken last month, public confidence in the Supreme Court has hit an all-time low. Just 25 percent of respondents had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the court. That’s an 11-point drop from last year, and twice the drop in public confidence in other institutions.
Much of the court’s image problem comes the feeling that it has been politicized, be it the Republicans’ refusal to allow a vote on Obama nominee Merrick Garland in 2016, or the fact that one justice refuses to recuse himself from cases that may implicate in his wife in a effort to overthrow democracy (public confidence in the court among Democrats stands at just 13 percent).
It’s also driven by the court’s recent decision to overturn the 50-year-old precedent in Roe v. Wade. The poll was taken before that decision, but after Justice Samuel Alito’s draft majority opinion was leaked to the press.