Former president Barack Obama said Friday that he is open to reforming the Supreme Court to increase Americans’ confidence in the Court, but warned against playing “explicit political games.”
Asked during an appearance on Pod Save America whether he would consider reforms to regain voters trust in the Court, Obama said: “I’m open to it.”
“I think it has to be thought through,” he said. “One of the arguments we made at the time when [Mitch] McConnell decided that … [Merrick Garland] wouldn’t even get a hearing or a vote, is that if you start playing such explicit political games in the appointment process, it’s hard for people not to feel as if this is just an extension of day-to-day congressional politics as opposed to — the Supreme Court stands above, to some degree, those politics.”
“And I think winning back that trust is gonna take some time,” he added. “I’m not sure it’s even gonna be solved unless we solve some of the underlying polarization.”
Forty-seven percent of U.S. adults say they have “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of trust in the judicial branch of the federal government that is headed by the Supreme Court, a Gallup survey found last month. That figure is a 20-percentage-point drop from two years ago.
Democrats, including Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairman Jaime Harrison, have claimed the Supreme Court is “illegitimate” after the Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion.
While Harrison did not explain what makes the Court “illegitimate,” progressives have leveled the charge against the Court since Republicans refused to hold a confirmation hearing for Obama’s nominee, Garland, in 2016. GOP leaders argued then that it would not be in the interest of Americans to appoint a justice in an election year.
Democrats grew particularly incensed in 2020, when Republicans chose to move forward with confirmation hearings for Justice Amy Coney Barrett just weeks before the presidential election.
Barrett’s confirmation created a 6-3 conservative majority on the Court.
During the Friday interview, Obama said voters had become “complacent” during the years of Roe.
“One of the problems with Roe was that it did make, I think, a lot of voters complacent figuring, ‘eh, do I really have to trudge over and vote in some obscure midterm election? Cuz I know that the Supreme Court is protecting me when it comes to my right to choose,’” he said.
Obama said pro-abortion activists must work to change “hearts and minds and attitudes” because the Court typically follows trends within society rather than leading on divisive issues.
“It’s very rare where the court gets ahead of society in a significant way. It typically reacts in response and more often when it’s gotten ahead, by the way it’s done bad things rather than good things,” Obama said.