from Hacker News

Confidence in U.S. Supreme Court Sinks to Historic Low

by Jason_Protell on 6/24/22, 8:19 PM with 48 comments

  • by rayiner on 6/24/22, 9:23 PM

    This is how we end up causing our institutions to crumble. Your average American has no idea what Roe means or doesn’t mean, or what it’s repeal means or doesn’t mean. It’s incumbent upon elites to tell the truth. Instead, people are playing fast and loose with the truth for political gain. Erin Chemerinsky, for example, a prominent Constitutional law scholar, called overturning Roe a “pure exercise of Republican power.”

    In reality, Roe was the left’s Lochner. A pure exercise of judicial law making that could not point to anything in the Constitutional text or history to support a sweeping rule. It’s a precedent that even folks in the left have taken to defending merely by virtue of its existence as such. It’s protection of second trimester abortions is out of step with public opinion, and out of step among the law in other civilized nations.

    Not all liberal precedents are like that. In fact most aren’t. There’s a huge difference between Brown and Loving and Obergefell and Roe both legally and in how the relevant issues have played out in domestic and international politics. Nonetheless, it will make political hay to act like overturning Roe will unleash the floodgates of rolling back everything else. Never mind the fact that, even though Roe was so vulnerable from the very beginning, it took conservatives 50 years of single-minded effort to overturn it.

  • by tablespoon on 6/24/22, 9:18 PM

    It's not terribly surprising. The biggest drop was among Democrats and (probably Democratic-leaning) independents, and this court isn't very friendly to their ideological priorities.

    With modern polarization, "confidence" actually seems to mean "confidence I'll get the result I want from it" (e.g. how ideologically aligned it is to me).

  • by belly_joe on 6/24/22, 9:15 PM

    Interesting that GOP confidence is down as well (since 2020)

  • by bryanrasmussen on 6/24/22, 9:15 PM

    Has there ever been any analysis as to what the confidence level was before Marbury vs. Madison?

  • by itsdrewmiller on 6/28/22, 2:48 AM

    Notably based on a survey that was only in the field June 1-20, so missed the actual Roe v. Wade ruling (though probably the leak did a fair amount of damage on its own).

  • by DLA on 6/24/22, 9:01 PM

    Misleading headline.