Majority of Americans don’t trust the current Supreme Court

Trust in the court largely falls along party lines

A new survey shows that more than half of Americans do not trust the Supreme Court as it begins a new term.

An Annenberg Public Policy Center poll found that 53 per cent of American adults do not trust the Supreme Court, with the same number of Americans saying they disapprove of the job the court is doing.

Conversely, only 39 per cent of American adults approve of how the Supreme Court approve of the job the court is doing, and 46 per cent trust the court.

But trust in the court is largely determined by party affiliation, as 70 per cent of Republicans trust the court while 32 per cent of Democrats have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the court.

The change comes after former president Donald Trump’s successful nominations of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett shifted the court drastically to the right and gave conservatives a 6-3 majority.

In addition, 55 per cent of those surveyed said that Supreme Court Justices “are just like any other politicians” and “we cannot trust them to decide court cases in a way that is in the best interest of our country.” That is up from just 33 per cent who said as much in 2019. In addition, the number of people who believe it has too much power doubled from 2019 to now, from 21 per cent to 42 per cent.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center, part of the University of Pennsylvania, conducted the poll through independent research company SSRS. SSRS interviewed 1,113 adults in the United States by phone between 2 August and 13 August, little more than a month after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade with its Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health decision. The survey has a margin of error of 3.6 percentage points.