In June 2022, the Supreme Court made a series of decisions that were received poorly by a large percentage of the American public. The Dobbs v. Jackson decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, arguably received the largest amount of attention. But also included were the decisions of West Virginia v. the E.P.A (which curbed the powers of the E.P.A. when regulating the energy sector), Carson v. Makin (which legitimized the practice of prayer in public schools), and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (which established excluding religious schools from public funding as unconstitutional). All of which were passed through by the six conservative justices in the majority.
These decisions pushed public opinion around the Supreme Court in a negative direction and were the impetus for our look into the views that the public held of the Court, and the public’s openness to a set of potential reforms. As discussed, a year ago, the legitimacy of the court, for many Americans, was in question.
A year later, and before rulings on bigger cases are likely to be released, we revisited many of the questions from a year ago to see how views have shifted within the American public.
In July 2022, right after these decisions were made, there was an increase in negative feelings with over half (55%) of views Americans held of the court being negative. This is in comparison to the 44% which were positive in nature. Over the past year, the negative feelings have subsided slightly while the positive feelings increased. In May of this year, the negative perceptions dropped to an average of 46% (a 9-point drop) and the concentration of positive feelings increased roughly seven points to 50.9%.
When we breakdown the scores Americans provided, we can see a change from the strong negative feelings in July of 2022, to more mild negative feelings and stronger positive feelings in May of 2023.
Following the decisions of 2022, most positive feelings were concentrated at lower levels, with 29% viewing the Supreme Court positively. These positive views were split between the 16% who had almost entirely positive views of the Court, and the additional 13% who held mostly positive views. Combined these very positive views were offset by the 31% who had very low positive scores for SCOTUS (31% gave a score of 0-20). This shifted over the past year, with the very low positive feelings dropping 11 points, to 20%, while strong and very strong positive feelings grew from 29% to 35% (a 6-point increase).
We can see this reflected in the spread of negative feelings as well. In July 2022, there was a concentration of 28% who held very strong negative feelings. This dropped by 9 points to 19% over the past year. That being said, the overall concentration of those holding negative feelings the majority of the time (61 or above on the 0-100 scale), dropped just 3 points from 38% to 35%.
Last year, detractors of the Court pointed to their rulings as not being grounded in the Constitution. Given this line of argument being so prevalent, we asked Americans what they felt the Court’s motivations were.
When first asked in July of last year, there was an even split between Americans who believed the rulings were based on the Constitution and those who believed they were based on other considerations. Only 50.4% of Americans believed these decisions were made based on the Constitution. This lack of faith has changed slightly over the past year. In May of 2023, those who believe the decisions were being made on other considerations decreased from 49.4% to 45.8%, and the sentiment that the rulings are based on the Constitution increased from 50.4% to 51.9%.
While the averages moved slightly, when we look at the breakdown of the scores, the changes become clearer. Looking at the breakdown of the idea that the decisions were based on the Constitution, we can see a similar range in 2023 as we saw in 2022, with a 4-point increase in strong believers and a 2-point increase in weak believers. Overall, the public’s faith in the Supreme Court has improved slightly as the average has leaned stronger for those who believe they base the decisions on the Constitution.
However, the changes become starker when looking at the breakdown of those who believe the decisions are based on other considerations and not the Constitution. In 2022, the view that the Supreme Court was not making decisions based on the Constitution was closely dived by those who felt this strongly (30%), those who do not feel this as strongly, or at all, (36%), and those in the middle (34%). Those who feel this strongly dropped three points, those who do not feel this strongly increased by seven points, and those who are in the middle decreased by four points.
Another area of measurement we used to gauge opinions was asking the American public how they felt about the level of power each branch of government held. In July of last year, the public felt that all three branches held too much power, with the judicial branch having the highest perceived view of having too much power (a score of 60.4 where 50.0 means the right amount of power. This was five points higher than the executive branch, and eight points above the legislative branch.
Over the past year, these sentiments have all moved closer to having the right amount of power, especially with the judicial branch. While it continues to be the branch with the highest level of having too much power, in 2023, SCOTUS received an average score of 54.0 (a 6.4-point drop). Over the same time period, the executive branch dropped 3.7 points to 52.2 and the legislative branch stayed almost identical at an average score of 52.2.
Looking at the breakdown of these scores, we can better understand how the increasing faith in the government may not be so transparent.
For the legislative branch there was not much significant change in the average or the breakdown. The concentration of those who feel strongly that the legislative branch has too much power went from 18% to 19%. Those who feel that have too little power changed by three points (42% in 2022, and 39% in 2023), while those who sit in the middle increased by 2 points.
The executive branch saw a similar pattern in the average, but a bigger shift toward those who strongly believe the President holds too much power. Despite the overall decrease in the average score, the concentration of those who believe it holds too much power increased. Indeed, the concentration of strong believers increased from 20% in 2022 to 25% in 2023. This coincided with a 4-point decrease in those feeling the executive branch does not have enough power (from 40% to 36%).
Unlike the other two branches, the judicial branch did not see changes of note in the bigger categories. Those who feel the judiciary has too much power went from 33% to 32%. At the same time those who feel that the judiciary does not have enough power stood at 39% in 2022, and currently is at 36%. While this does not represent no movement, given the drop in the average score, the expectation was that the movement would have been more notable. Instead, there was more movement within groups versus moving from one group to another.
Switching gears slightly, we wanted to see how the public reacted to some of the reform ideas that had been discussed by many sources last year. These included SCOTUS agreeing to a code of ethics, setting an age limit for justices, establishing term limits, and expanding the number of justices on the court.
In 2022, we saw high levels of support for three of the reform proposals while the fourth was supported but not at the same level. The support level for three of the reforms dipped slightly over the year, while one idea gained nearly eight points during the same time period.
The highest testing reform idea in 2022 was establishing a code of ethics which would prevent any justices from participating in cases which held conflicts of interest. Over the past year, support remained similar on average, and also when looking at the breakdown of responses. The concentration of strong supporters went from 47% to 48% while detractors went from 17% to 19%, those in the middle were at 17% at both points.
The idea of an age limit also remained relatively steady on the average and within the breakdown of responses. Strong supporters went from 47% in 2022 to 48% last month, and the detractors went from 20% to 21%.
The idea of expanding the Court to 13 justices tends to get the most airtime given the potential outcome of such action. However the idea has been ruled out by the White House and would require jettisoning the filibuster in the Senate, which seems unlikely at best, and certainly not going to happen in the current Senate for this particular issue.
That being said, more people support the idea than oppose it, and the average support dipped less than a point over the past year. The breakdown yet again shows a very low level of movement with strong support going from 36% to 34%, and strong opposition from 27% to 28%.
The one reform idea we tested that did show movement is setting term limits. In 2022, the average support was 61.8 and then increased to 69.1 by May of 2023. The breakdown of responses also showed some interesting movements. Given the increase in the average we would have thought that the strong supporters would have increased, but instead we saw a slight dip in strong support (42% in 2022 to 39%). We did see an increase of 3 points among those in the middle range.
While there was not much movement between the groups at the high end of support, we did see that many strong supporters increased their already high level of support over the past ten or so months.
As we have observed, public opinion has been improving over the past year surrounding the functioning of the Supreme Court. But this had very little impact on the potential reforms to the Court. With some big cases being announced over the next month or so, it will be interesting to see where the views of Americans head. At the same time, it seems clear that the Court is still on very thin ice when it comes to public perception, and it is unlikely that the desire for reform is likely to go away anytime soon.