Analysis: If the court needs the respect of the American people to wield its power, it’s been on shaky terrain since at least 2005. Like the presidency and Congress, it may be indelibly stained with the muck of partisanship.
that snippet as he was recently exploring Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s declination of a summons from the Senate Judiciary Committee. Huetteman’s 2011 article focused on an appearance by Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Antonin Scalia before that same committee. Breyer and Scalia no longer serve on the court and, for its part, the court no longer seems particularly interested in being grilled by the Senate.
If the court needs the respect of the American people to wield its power, it’s been on shaky terrain since at least 2005. That was the point at which confidence in the Supreme Court fell and remained beneath 50 percent in. From 1990 to 2004, the percentage of Americans expressing a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the court averaged 46 percent. From 2005 to 2022, the most recent year for which data is available, the average has been 36 percent.
That nomination fight is itself a reflection of how partisanship colors the court in a way it didn’t used to. As The Washington Postlast year, confirmation of justices to the court has gone through three phases over time: approval by voice vote, near-unanimous approval by recorded vote and, most recently, approval by narrow, partisan margins.
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