Chief Justice John Roberts said on Wednesday that too many Americans view supreme court justices as political actors, speaking at a legal conference in Hershey, Pennsylvania. He said some people think the court is making policy decisions instead of applying the law.
Roberts also said some people lack an accurate understanding of what the court does. His remarks came as a recent Marquette University Law School poll found 57 percent of Americans disapprove of the Supreme Court’s performance, while 42 percent approve.
Roberts in Hershey
Roberts told the conference, "I think at a very basic level, people think we’re making policy decisions, [that] we’re saying we think this is what things should be, as opposed to this is what the law provides". He also said, "We’re not simply part of the political process, and there’s a reason for that, and I’m not sure people grasp that as much as is appropriate".
The chief justice made the comments in Hershey while defending the court’s role as public criticism has sharpened. The article points to recent rulings, ethics concerns, and a White House dinner attended by the six conservative bloc justices earlier this month as part of that backdrop.
Polls and public approval
The current numbers mark a change from earlier views of the court. A Gallup poll from six years earlier found 58 percent of respondents approved of the Supreme Court’s work, and at the start of the 21st century 62 percent of Americans said they viewed the court favorably.
That decline leaves the court facing a narrower margin for public trust than it had when approval was higher. Roberts’ comments addressed that gap directly by arguing that many Americans misunderstand the institution’s job.
Olszewski bill in Congress
Earlier this month, Rep. Johnny Olszewski introduced a bill that would restrict justices from serving beyond 18-year terms. He said, "Faith in the court depends on its legitimacy as a fair and independent institution. Recent rulings that have thrown out decades of legal precedent, combined with ethically dubious behavior by sitting judges, are testing that faith".
The article says the Supreme Court recently upended enforcement mechanisms for the Voting Rights Act, and many legal experts view that change as leaving the law toothless. It also says justices have received and failed to publicly report millions of dollars in gifts from wealthy individuals with stakes in court cases.
Roberts’ remarks put the court’s public standing and its separation from day-to-day politics back at the center of the debate. For readers, the immediate question is whether lawmakers and the justices themselves respond to that criticism with tighter ethics rules, term limits, or neither.
