Maddow Blog Public confidence in Supreme Court justices keeps getting worse

By all appearances, Supreme Court justices care, at least a little, about public confidence and perceptions of their work. A few years ago, for example, Justice Amy Coney Barrett made a public appearance in which the conservative jurist declared, “My goal today is to convince you that this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks.”

Last year, Justice Brett Kavanaugh made similar comments, insisting that the Supreme Court is “an institution of law not of politics, not of partisanship.” The conservative added that he believes that the current lineup of justices has succeeded in “deciding cases based on law and not based on partisan affiliation and partisanship.”

The comments reflected a larger goal: The more the Supreme Court’s dominant conservative majority positions the institution as a political force, the more some of its justices hope members of the public won’t believe their lying eyes.

Those efforts don’t appear to be working. The Associated Press reported this week on the results of its new national poll, which found that a clear majority of Americans believe the current justices are “more likely to be guided by their own ideology rather than serving as neutral arbiters of government authority.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/maddow-blog-public-confidence-supreme-172506972.html