If it seemed to you as though certain Supreme Court justices were injecting politics into their questions during last month's high-stakes oral arguments in the Obamacare case, you're not alone... and that should worry you.
A new poll shows that half of Americans think the justices will make their decisions based on partisan politics rather than the Constitution or the text of the law.
By all accounts, the scene last month did indeed feature highly-charged political elements as certain conservative justices parroted Republican talking points on the law, while barely touching on precedents, merits, or facts. Coming a mere two years after the Court's infamous Citizens United decision, last month's proceedings seemed all the more political.
But even taken together, those comments and that decision don't fully explain why the American public is so seemingly willing to believe that politics have invaded the once-inviolate halls of the nation's most important legal institution. Even some of the most contentious decisions going back to Bush v. Gore only hint at the full scope of the Supreme Court's integrity crisis. The problem goes beyond the Court’s decisions.
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