The Supreme Court

 

 

Public confidence in the Supreme Court is now at all time low. Only 25% of the American public has confidence in the court, a sharp decrease from 2021, when 36% of the public had confidence in the court. Confidence in the court peaked at 56% in 1987 and 1988.

The short explanation for the decline is simply that the Supreme Court has gotten too conservative.

Heather Cox Richardson discussed the problem in her newsletter of January 1.

Here’s the key paragraphs:

 Yesterday, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts issued the 2022 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary. It’s an interesting document, not just for what it says, but also for what it doesn’t say. The introduction is dominated by a discussion of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision in which the Warren court overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision and required the desegregation of the public schools. It was a moment in which the Supreme Court’s stance overturned a long history of discrimination and appeared heroic.

The unstated comparison is to this summer’s decision of the Roberts court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized a woman’s constitutional right to obtain an abortion. The comparison runs aground on the reality that Brown v. Board expanded equality before the law and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health contracts it, but it is interesting that Roberts feels obliged to use the court’s annual report to defend the court’s actions.

The report makes no mention of the leak of the Dobbs decision, a leak that the right wing met with fury but that has come to appear to be associated with right-wing Justice Samuel Alito and thus seems to have fallen off their radar screen. The report does not mention popular demands for justices to have a code of ethics—demands heightened by news that Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife Ginni participated in attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election but he did not recuse himself from making decisions about that attempt—but it does demand protection for judges for their safety, despite the court’s recent expansion of gun rights. “A judicial system cannot and should not live in fear,” Roberts wrote.

 https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-1-2023

Many of the justices on the court are Catholics, but even the National Catholic Reporter sees a problem with that. Although the publication just named Samuel Alito as the Newsmaker of the Year, it was not a vote of confidence. The closing paragraphs explain their position:

 “Alito has said publicly that he recognizes that his judicial decisions affect people. "It's important to keep in mind that these decisions are not abstract discussions — they have real impact on the world," he said at a September inaugural lecture for the Project on Constitutional Originalism and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition at the Catholic University of America's law school.

That is true and it is newsworthy, though — as we have seen in the decisions about gun rights, labor unions, the death penalty, abortion and the coopting of our democratic process for one aim — Alito's impact is certainly not worth cheering.

The article below goes into more detail on his decisions regarding abortion,   sex discrimination, environmentalism, labor unions, voting rights, gun ownership, the death penalty, and same sex marriage – all of which are contrary to public opinion.

 https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/editorial/editorial-justice-samuel-alito-ncrs-2022-newsmaker-year

The first judiciary act was passed in 1789, and it has been modified 7 times since then. In 2021, Senate Bill 1141 was passed, in an attempt to increase the number of justices on the Supreme Court from 9 to 13. However, it did not pass.     

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judiciary_Act_of_1789

Just as FDR’s plan to “stack the court” in 1937 was not successful, the latest version will not succeed either. For now, the solution is more long term. The fact that the Democrats still control the senate means that they will have an opportunity to appoint more moderate justices to the lower courts.

Over the course of Donald Trump's presidential term, he nominated 234 lawyers, judges, and politicians for federal judgeships.

Out of the 234 judges appointed, three of the public servants made it to The Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, 174 judges were confirmed for the US Court of Appeals and 54 judges assumed positions with the US District Courts.

To round out the exact aforementioned number, three more officials were confirmed for the US Court of International Trade.

The very last judge nominated by Trump was Aileen Cannon, who took office after Trump was defeated in 2020. Her meddling in the Mar-A-Lago document case was roundly criticized by legal experts.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/18997649/donald-trump-supreme-court-justice-appointees/

As of January 1, 2023, the United States Senate has confirmed 97 Article III judges nominated by Biden: one Associate Justice to the Supreme Court, 28 judges for the United States courts of appeals and 68 judges for the United States district courts. There are 45 nominations awaiting Senate action: Nine for the courts of appeals, and 36 for the district courts. There are nine vacancies on the U.S. courts of appeals, 70 vacancies on the U.S. district courts, two vacancies on the United States Court of International Trade, as well as 28 announced federal judicial vacancies that will occur before the end of Biden's term (4 for the courts of appeals and 24 for district courts). Biden has not made any recess appointments to the federal courts. Biden had the largest number of Article III judicial nominees confirmed during a president's first year in office since Ronald Reagan in 1981.

Regarding the Article I courts, as of December 15, 2022, the Senate has confirmed three judges nominated by Biden, two to the United States Court of Federal Claims and one to the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. There are no nominations to the Article I courts awaiting Senate action. There are two vacancies on the United States Court of Federal Claims and two on the United States Tax Court. On March 2, 2021, Biden designated Elaine D. Kaplan as Chief Judge of the Court of Federal Claims Biden has not elevated any judges to the position of Chief Judge.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_judges_appointed_by_Joe_Biden

Although we all may disagree with Samuel Alito’s decisions, he DID recognize that that they DO have consequences – which is precisely why the 2022 midterms were such a disaster for the Republican Party. Oddly enough, that may be the reason that we should be thankful for Samuel Alito.