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Ian Explains: Does it matter if Americans don't trust the Supreme Court?
Public approval for the US Supreme Court is at an all-time low. But how much does that matter really? On Ian Explains, Ian Bremmer breaks down why voters believe the Court has become more partisan and politically motivated in recent years and whether public perception makes any difference in how it operates.
According to Gallup polling, SCOTUS has had a strong net approval rating, much higher than the President and Congress, for most of the last 25 years. But as of September 2023, 58% of Americans disapproved of the Supreme Court, a record high. The Court’s credibility has come under fire following ethics scandals involving Justice Clarence Thomas and a string of 6-3 conservative majority opinions, like the June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturning Roe v. Wade, increasingly out of step with public opinion.
It’s a class question of separation of powers: The justices aren’t elected, and the judicial branch of government isn’t designed to respond to popular will. But if SCOTUS falls out of step with voters completely, it risks losing the very thing that gives it legitimacy: public faith.
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
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Former U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks on the day of his court appearance in New York after being indicted by a Manhattan grand jury following a probe into hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels, in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., April 4, 2023.
The Supreme Court takes on Jan. 6
The announcement comes on the heels of Trump’s legal team filing an appeal delaying the DC court trial over charges that he plotted to overturn the election. The trial's fast-tracked timeline sought to reach a ruling before the first Republican primary on Jan. 15, 2024. Rather than being heard on Jan. 2, the case is now set for March 4, the day before Super Tuesday, the largest voting day of the primary season.
The appeal argues that Trump is immune from any Jan. 6-related charges because he was president at the time. In reality, this is an extension of Trump’s legal strategy: Delay the trials against him for as long as possible so they don’t stop him from becoming the GOP nominee.
The upshot: The Supreme Court’s decision on obstruction and immunity could radically alter the shape, scope, and timing of the DC case, which seemed like it would be the first of the four Trump indictments to be decided. It could even invalidate the outcome of the lower court’s case. With the primary season kicking off and Trump leading in the polls, any delay or deterrence to the trials increases the likelihood Trump could face court judgments after becoming the GOP nominee.
3 key Supreme Court decisions expected in June 2023
As the 2023-2023 Supreme Court session comes to a close, a flurry of major decisions are expected by the end of the month on the EPA, affirmative action, and student loan forgiveness. Emily Bazelon, Yale Law School Senior Research Fellow and host of Slate’s Political Gabfest podcast, stopped by GZERO World with Ian Bremmer to discuss some of the big cases argued before the court this term.
SCOTUS already issued a ruling in Sackett v. EPA, limiting the power of the Environmental Protection Agency to protect US wetlands and waterways. It’s the second ruling in a year where the justices significantly rolled back the federal government’s authority to regulate the environment.
“Millions of acres that have been regulated up till now won't be anymore,” Bazelon says, “And when you think about the record of the Clean Water Act for preserving and cleaning Americans’ waterways and rivers, now the EPA has a lot less reach to do that.
There are also two important cases in higher education––affirmative action and President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. Bazelon thinks that SCOTUS is ready to end race-based affirmative action in the US based on justices’ questioning in oral arguments. How the court will rule in the student loans case, however, is trickier to predict because loan forgiveness is somewhat tied to national emergency declaration for COVID, which ended in May.
For more on the Supreme Court and what to expect from anticipated rulings this year, tune into GZERO World with Ian Bremmer. Check local listings.
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SCOTUS confirmation hearings no longer serve a purpose
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, discusses the Supreme Court hearings.
Today's question. Have the Supreme Court hearings lost their purpose?
Blanketing cable news this week are the Senate Judiciary hearings to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. Brown Jackson surpasses anyone's standard of a qualified Supreme Court justice. She's educated at the best law schools. She's been a Supreme Court clerk, a public defender, a trial court judge, and a circuit court judge. She's at least as qualified as anybody else serving on the court today. And nobody questions that she has a top notch intellect and character to sit on the Court.
So the questions she's facing this week at the hearing aren't about her qualifications. They are at best about her ideology, and at worst about things that have nothing to do with her, like culture war battles over the definition of a woman. And like every recent Supreme Court nominee, she's learned to be very careful and circumspect in describing her ideology so she doesn't give the other side anything to use against her.
So that raises a question. What's the point of having these hearings? Nearly every Democrat has already pre-committed to voting for her. And though they won't say it, nearly every Republican has already pre-committed to voting against her. There's no upside for members of either party in not voting with the team on this issue.
The hearings are generating little heat and even less light, because the Democrats basically have to support President Biden's pick. They're left to give fawning softballs that give the judge a chance to repeatedly emphasize her qualifications. And the Republicans are essentially showboating, hoping to create tweet worthy clips to justify their no votes in the proper partisan frame. Before Republicans changed the rules in 2017 to allow the Supreme Court justices to be confirmed on simple party line, majority votes, the opposition party would use the nomination hearings to ask tough questions, but at least some of them were looking for excuses to vote for a judge, since at least some of the minority party would be needed to confirm a judge. Indeed, all of President Obama and President Bush's appointees received bipartisan votes, and in the Clinton administration, the Supreme Court votes were nearly unanimous.
But since that time, the nomination process and the hearings have turned into purely partisan affairs. The three judges nominated by President Trump received only four Democratic votes, and it's unlikely that Brown Jackson received that many votes from Republicans. You could argue that there was something unique about each of the Trump justices, but the only thing unique about Brown Jackson is that she's clearly deserving of the job, but she will struggle to find a single Republican willing to say it.
So the hearings today served no purpose and could very well do harm in that they explicitly drag justices into these bitter partisan battles and help erode the neutrality of the courts, or at least the perception of the neutrality of the courts. Judges now are frequently framed as partisan ideologues who are committed to one political party or another, something that Justice John Roberts said he explicitly wanted to avoid. And that will have consequences for years to come, if the courts are asked to rule on voting rules or are asked to weigh in on contested elections in the coming years.
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