Supreme Court must deal with political “confusion” in the US, but is in no rush

Donald Trump's New Election Controversies Give Supreme Court an Opportunity as Justices' Stature Declines

For months, judges have been on the defensive due to controversy over precedent-breaking rulings and their behavior outside the courtroom.

The Court will be focused on shaping developments in the 2024 presidential election and, more broadly, determining the course of American democracy.

For the judges' own institutional reputation, the question is whether they can, in the eyes of the public, live up to the premise that the Court is above politics.

On Friday (22), the court made it clear that it is not ready to take charge. He rejected a request from special counsel Jack Smith to rule on whether Trump should be protected from alleged crimes while in office.

The looming questions are whether Trump is immune from federal prosecution for his actions in the wake of the 2020 election, and whether a state can disqualify him from the 2024 election due to his role in the U.S. Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021. .

As the presidential elections approach, the call for judicial transparency has become stronger. Regardless of how the judges ultimately rule, there is an apparent demand for legal reasoning that is clear, reasoned and inspires confidence.

Since May 2022, when a draft ruling was leaked that overturned constitutional rights to abortion, judges have been subject to enormous scrutiny and criticism. The final decimation of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision Wade, who had made abortion legal nationwide, continues to affect law and political outcomes and influence culture and more personal family decisions.

The 6-3 absolute majority in the conservative-liberal caucus continued its push to the right, eliminating racial affirmative action in colleges and diminishing federal regulatory power at all levels.

Meanwhile, doubts about the justices' personal ethics have grown over the past year, particularly in the case of Justice Clarence Thomas, the subject of ProPublica investigations into his luxury travel and other financial benefits obtained from wealthy conservatives.

Gallup reported in September that public approval of the Court remains at record levels. Separately, Gallup found that less than half of Americans say they have “a lot” or even “a fair amount” of confidence in the court.

How much do judges care about public opinion?

It is difficult to know how much the institutional reputation of judges weighs on them. Early in his term, Chief Justice John Roberts emphasized that the court was not like the White House or Congress.

“I think the most important thing for the public to understand is that we are not a political branch of government,” Roberts said in a 2009 C-SPAN interview. “They don’t elect us. If they don’t like what we’re doing, it’s more or less a shame – in addition to…conviction and impeachment, which has never happened with the Court.”

Almost 15 years later, Roberts seems more attentive to public impressions. He moderated the Court with his own vote from the center of the bench and led the majority to its first written code of ethics.

The judges, however, took to this code somewhat reluctantly, saying it was necessary to correct any public “misunderstanding” about its standards.

“The absence of a Code has led, in recent years, to the misunderstanding that the Ministers of this Court, unlike all other jurists in this country, consider themselves free from any ethical rules,” they stated when they released the ethical rules.

Some justices, notably liberal Elena Kagan, have endorsed ethical rules and the importance of public scrutiny. Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett expressed some of this theme, but also raised the notion of public “misimpressions.”

“Public scrutiny is welcome,” Barrett told a Wisconsin audience in August, according to Politico. “Increasing and improving civic education is welcome.”