Supreme Court Unpopularity: Unrelated to Rulings

I am told frequently these days that the Supreme Court of the United States is “out of touch.” Having been taken over by the “hard right,” this argument runs, the Court has lost its vital connection to public opinion and, in consequence, has made itself unpopular from sea to shining sea. In 2018, the Court’s approval rating was 50 percent; now, it’s less well-regarded than is Joe Biden. Why has this happened? Because the Court’s new majority is “radical,” “cruel,” “fringe,” “extreme,” and even “illegitimate,” and the public has noticed.

Certainly, this is a convenient explanation for those who dislike the Court’s current approach. But is it true? Per “a survey conducted in April by researchers at Harvard, Stanford and the University of Texas” and written up this month in the New York Times, it is most decidedly not. As the study shows, there does not seem to be much daylight at all between how the Court has ruled this term — and, indeed, how it was expected to rule this term by its critics — and the preferences of the general public. As a matter of fact, the Court has been out of line with public opinion in only two of the cases from this term — and one of those cases was decided 9–0. Asked about Sackett v. EPA, an environmental case regarding the statutory scope of “waters,” 72 percent of Americans said that they wanted the statute to “be read broadly, to include things like wetlands,” with 28 percent saying that they wanted it to “be read narrowly, to include only things like streams, rivers and lakes.” In a complex decision, the Court disagreed 5–4, with all nine justices rejecting the EPA’s definition, but Sotomayor, Jackson, Kagan, and Kavanaugh dissenting from the majority opinion’s narrower determination that, to be covered, “wetlands” must be connected to a navigable body of water. Asked about Gonzalez v. Google, 72 percent of voters said that Google should be “held responsible for aiding and abetting terrorism for not removing content and accounts promoting terrorism”; unanimously, the Court disagreed. What, I wonder, should we conclude from that?

About the Author

Charles C. W. Cooke

Charles C. W. Cooke is a senior editor at National Review and the host of The Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast.

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I am told frequently these days that the Supreme Court of the United States is “out of touch.” Having been taken over by the “hard right,” this argument runs, the Court has lost its vital connection to public opinion and, in consequence, has made itself unpopular from sea to shining sea. In 2018, the Court’s approval rating was 50 percent; now, it’s less well-regarded than is Joe Biden. Why has this happened? Because the Court’s new majority is “radical,” “cruel,” “fringe,” “extreme,” and even “illegitimate,” and the public has noticed.

Certainly, this is a convenient explanation for those who dislike the Court’s current approach. But is it true? Per “a survey conducted in April by researchers at Harvard, Stanford and the University of Texas” and written up this month in the New York Times, it is most decidedly not. As the study shows, there does not seem to be much daylight at all between how the Court has ruled this term — and, indeed, how it was expected to rule this term by its critics — and the preferences of the general public. As a matter of fact, the Court has been out of line with public opinion in only two of the cases from this term — and one of those cases was decided 9–0. Asked about Sackett v. EPA, an environmental case regarding the statutory scope of “waters,” 72 percent of Americans said that they wanted the statute to “be read broadly, to include things like wetlands,” with 28 percent saying that they wanted it to “be read narrowly, to include only things like streams, rivers and lakes.” In a complex decision, the Court disagreed 5–4, with all nine justices rejecting the EPA’s definition, but Sotomayor, Jackson, Kagan, and Kavanaugh dissenting from the majority opinion’s narrower determination that, to be covered, “wetlands” must be connected to a navigable body of water. Asked about Gonzalez v. Google, 72 percent of voters said that Google should be “held responsible for aiding and abetting terrorism for not removing content and accounts promoting terrorism”; unanimously, the Court disagreed. What, I wonder, should we conclude from that?