The approval rating of the nation’s highest court stands at 40 per cent, according to a new poll

The Supreme Court’s approval rating has plunged to one of its lowest levels yet ahead of a ruling on Donald Trump’s eligibility to run for president.

The approval rating of the nation’s highest court stands at 40 per cent, according to the latest poll released by Marquette Law School on Wednesday.

The latest numbers rival only those of July 2022, when only 38 per cent of US adults said they approved of the Supreme Court and 61 per cent disapproved – just after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade.

  • ME5SENGER_24@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    157
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    7 months ago

    Approval ratings mean nothing to lifetime appointments. Nobody should hold a position forever. If they wanna keep them there for life, then at least make them subject to review every X years

    • blargerer@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      72
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      7 months ago

      Theres only one way to end a lifetime appointment, so they should worry if it gets too low.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        20
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        7 months ago

        You can impeach them or imprison them too. They only hold their position “in good behavior”.

        • Optional@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          36
          ·
          7 months ago

          Given that Thomas is clearly accepting bribes and his wife is using him to further a coup, I think we can safely assume that means nothing, other than a future weapon against a liberal justice.

          • Maggoty@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            6
            ·
            7 months ago

            If you get one in prison then I’m pretty sure they’ll get kicked out. Now we just need a Congress with the balls to spend 5 pages defining bribery so the justices can’t wiggle out of it.

        • Zron@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          7 months ago

          How do imprison someone who has the money, connections, and legal knowledge to appeal the case all the way up to themselves.

    • thefartographer@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      14
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      7 months ago

      My wife and I love each other endlessly and agreed to the whole “until death” thing, but we both hold a firm belief that marriage contracts should have an expiration date at which point the couple can step back and evaluate if they want to continue this union. If not, marriage dissolved, bye.

      I hear people say that X isn’t marriage, but I say that nothing should be marriage and EVERYTHING should have a planned expiration date. Except light bulbs, batteries, and puppies.

      • d00phy@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        7 months ago

        Kittens, too. Really all baby animals. And most baby humans (also animals, I know. Settle down, Internet).

        • thefartographer@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          7 months ago

          I don’t see the rabble of the internet coming out in their usual droves to insult you for the babies/animals quip, so I’ll do it for you!

          What the fuck, you donkey!? Don’t you understand how is babby formed??? It happens when girl get pragnent!!!

          • d00phy@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            7 months ago

            Appreciate it. I was worried the Internet would let me down, there! Glad someone’s carrying the banner!

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      7 months ago

      It surely does mean something. They don’t have an army to enforce their rulings. They also can get a whole bunch of new judges in. Finally, if a prosecutor gets their shit together they could end up in prison for bribery. And while they can define bribery however they want, see point one.

  • Thrashy@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    67
    ·
    edit-2
    7 months ago

    We are rapidly approaching the point where it is an open question as to whether the Supreme Court can make its rulings stick in jurisdictions that don’t fall along the current majority’s ideological bent, and that’s not a place anybody in their right mind wants to go. The question is, are Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett still possessed of enough self-awareness to recognize that and rule accordingly at least some of the time? If not, do Roberts and Gorsuch make a consistent enough voting bloc to swing dicey decisions away from the foaming-at-the-mouth radical right wing of the bench when they might seriously endanger the ongoing credibility of the court as an institution? I’m not super optimistic, but time will tell…

    • Lemmeenym@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      7 months ago

      We are rapidly approaching the point where it is an open question as to whether the Supreme Court can make its rulings stick in jurisdictions that don’t fall along the current majority’s ideological bent

      Recently the most significant refusals to follow court rulings are in jurisdictions that do agree with the court majority’s ideological bent. Alabama’s voting maps fight and Texas’s current border fight being the two biggest ones. At least for now democrats still generally believe in the American system and respect the rule of law.

        • beardown@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          12
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          7 months ago

          Probably the same thing that happened with Dobbs - ultimately, not much of anything.

          It’s sad. But Americans need to stand up for ourselves.

          When SCOTUS abolishes Chevron deference later this year and consequently destroys the federal bureaucracy we will be finished. Hopefully the FBI can lean on SCOTUS to prevent that, though it is doubtful they are astute enough to perceive Chevron’s destruction for the national security disaster that it is

      • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        7 months ago

        Is Hawaii thumbing its nose at a ruling? I assume California is the jurisdiction most likely to eventually say “make us”.

    • Optional@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      16
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      7 months ago

      There’s a reason for it. We may have made the need for it meaningless, but the reasoning is sound.

      • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        26
        ·
        7 months ago

        The functional part (avoiding incentivizing corruption) could be handled just as well by giving them lifelong pay (and financial reporting). The winds of justice being determined by when an old person dies is not a necessary feature.

      • SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        19
        ·
        7 months ago

        It wasn’t, really. We need to stop attributing some kind of infinite foresight and wisdom to the authors of the constitution. The Supreme Court was a bad idea poorly implemented, the senate as the superior house was a fucking terrible idea, and the independent executive is not defensible at this point.

        The authors (who, let’s remember, were working with a 17th century philosophy on the nature of humankind that has since been discredited) were operating on entirely different premises, for an entirely different country, and balancing things like slavery and freedom and democracy versus rule by the elite (the elite were justified to rule by their identity as being elites) by trying to come to a middle ground compromise on those and related issues. It’s really kind of crap by modern democratic, political, and philosophical standards. The only reason it hasn’t been addressed is that we’ve become self-aware enough that we’re terrified that US democracy has fallen to the point that we could only do worse than 18th century slaveholders, landlords, and wealthy lawyers.

        To make it explicit, the authors thought that a) the rich would put the country’s interests ahead of their own, b) that selfishness would mean people wanted to protect their branch of government rather than their party, and c) that part b would be a sufficient bulwark against demagoguery. They believed in a world where men (and I mean men, specifically, and rich men in particular) were rational actors who would act in their own self-interest.

        Don’t get me wrong - they were reading the scholars of their time - but if political and social science hasn’t made advances in the past three centuries we should probably just give it up.

  • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    29
    ·
    7 months ago

    Well, yeah half the court was appointed through nebulous means, and they’ve been slowly throwing out things considered settled law that’s been on the books for literal decades. No shit that people have no faith in the legitimacy of the court anymore.

    At this point I think we should ignore any and all rulings they make until we fix the system that brought this bullshit on.

  • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    24
    ·
    7 months ago

    When five out of nine have been appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote, that’s what you’ll get.

    Of course, we have no way of removing any of them, so it’s not like they have to care.

      • madcat451@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        edit-2
        7 months ago

        I hate that the rule of law is being eroded and vanishing before my eyes by these people, like Abbott and similar ilk, but…it is hard to yourself stick to the rule of law, when the other will not. It almost becomes meaningless, ink on a piece of paper and nothing more.

        I cannot think of good alternatives, when things reach that stage. I just hope we still have a way to turn back from all of this. I want to believe the train tracks we’re on still fork off in a different direction, somewhere along the line before we slam into the wall at 80MPH.

        The eradication of the rule of law is one of the most dangerous things I think a modern society can have happen. I have ideas about where that goes, and it’s some pretty fucking dark places I’d rather we as a nation would not.

      • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        7 months ago

        That’s not viable. It requires getting a bunch of Republicans to agree to it, and getting even one Republican to listen to reason is a rare thing.

    • AbidanYre@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      7 months ago

      To be fair, Bush had won the popular vote by the time he nominated any justices.

      • Riccosuave@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        14
        ·
        7 months ago

        Yes, but he wouldn’t have even been president in the first place if it wasn’t for the Supreme Court, and specifically Clarence Thomas.

        • AbidanYre@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          edit-2
          7 months ago

          True. And he had an incumbency advantage in 2004. I was just pointing out that Bush’s appointments weren’t as simple as “he didn’t win the popular vote.”

          • Drusas@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            7 months ago

            Right, but he wouldn’t have even been running in 2004 if he hadn’t been handed the presidency in 2000.

      • athos77@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        7 months ago

        He won the popular vote by taking the country into an unjustified war because he has daddy issues.

  • n1ckn4m3@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    19
    ·
    7 months ago

    Unfortunately, they could have a 0% approval rating and we’d still never get the 2/3rds majority in congress to do fuckall about it. This supreme court will continue to pander to corporate and donor interests and act wholly without ethics because our system was built on the concept that people in those roles would act with integrity and utterly falls apart when people on the supreme court flagrantly disregard their responsibility to citizens and act in their own interests.

      • n1ckn4m3@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        14
        ·
        7 months ago

        Can’t say I disagree. When you fight a cheater by playing 100% by the rules in a world where cheating isn’t punished, you lose every time. This pretty much sums up the last 40 years of the Democratic party.

        • Optional@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          7 months ago

          Don’t forget the idiocy of playing as center-right as possible by running the most milquetoast candidates possible. Every time. Still, actually.

        • the post of tom joad@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          7 months ago

          Yes, one starts to wonder after 40 years of it’s not by design. How much does it cost to get a politician not to do something i wonder? Probably pretty cheap since hey, how would you prove it when nothing happened?

          I know I’m just talking shit but i kinda get the feeling after watching them fail for decades that maybe they aren’t the hapless helpless rule of law guys they’d prefer we thought them as. Which is more likely? It just doesn’t pass the smell test

    • Crikeste@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      11
      ·
      7 months ago

      And yet American criticize everyone but themselves. It’s almost as if the American populace has had their heads filled with nonsense propaganda and they couldn’t even tell you a single real truth about the world outside of America.

  • TengoHipo@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    7 months ago

    They are all in someone’s pocket. How can we approve of them. They make horrible decisions as of late.

  • dhork@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    7 months ago

    Shit, they are so screwed when they have to go up for election again…

    Wait, what?