The U.S. Supreme Court, currently dominated by radical extremists, has once again ignored its own precedent in a First and Fourth Amendment decisions released Wednesday, an action called out by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. This “restless and newly constituted Court,” she wrote in a partial dissent, “sees fit to refashion the standard anew to foreclose remedies in yet more cases,” adding that the measures the Court takes to ensure Boule’s [the plaintiff’s] case is dismissed are inconsistent with governing precedent.”
That’s Sotomayor raising the alarm again that the conservative majority on this Court has gone rogue. That’s something that is becoming increasingly clear to the public, as support for dealing with it by expanding the Court is growing. The latest Daily Kos/Civiqs poll shows that a plurality of voters, 41%, think the court is too conservative. This follows the leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, which 78% of respondents said they had heard a lot about.
That leak has made a big difference in support:
Campaign Action
“Reviewing several weeks of tracking data, it is clear that the vast majority of Americans believe abortion should remain legal and deeply oppose proposed Republican abortion bans,” said Rachael Russell, Senior Manager of Polling & Analytics at the Hub Project and Advisor to Navigator Research. “We’ve seen a significant shift in recent weeks in the share of Americans that support expanding the Supreme Court beyond 9 seats—a strong indication that the leaked draft decision has undermined confidence in the Court as an institution.”
There’s room for much more growth in public support for expansion, according to researchers who’ve just released a longitudinal study of how the Court stands relative to the public ideologically. The researchers used three surveys taken over the course of the past decade, demonstrating that “the gap between the court and the public has grown since 2020, with the court moving from being quite close to the average American to a position that is more conservative than the majority of Americans.” They also find, however, that “many members of the public currently underestimate the court’s conservative leaning,” particularly Democrats.
“The fact that so many people currently underestimate how conservative the court is implies that support for proposed changes to the court may be weaker than it would be if people knew with greater accuracy the court’s conservative nature,” the study’s authors write.
Prof. Maya Sen, one of the study authors, tweets that the upcoming decisions “will probably illustrate for more Americans the Court's ideology,” and, “If our results are any indication, calls for Supreme Court reform will probably pick up.”
When the calls for reform are coming from inside the Court (and it’s not the first time Sotomayor has sounded the alarm), Congress has to pay attention.
We talk to gun control advocate and executive director of Guns Down America, Igor Volsky on Daily Kos' The Brief podcast
RELATED STORIES: