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Wednesday, October 4th, 2023

Faith in the Supreme Court is down. Voters now say they want changes.

Author:     STEVEN SHEPARD
Source:    
Publication Date:     09/30/2023 | 07:00 AM EDT
 Link: Faith in the Supreme Court is down. Voters now say they want changes.
Stephan:  

The reason I picked this report is the graph that heads the story. Look at it. What stands out for you? What stood out for me was the high percentage of people who have no idea who any of these people are. That correlates with the study (see SR archive) showing that a third of Americans can’t even name the three branches of government. As I have said many times on SR, to me, the problem with America is Americans. About a third of the American voter population is astonishingly ignorant and knows little or nothing about how our democracy works. They vote on their hate, racism, grievances, and resentments.

The Supreme Court faces a legitimacy crisis at the dawn of its new term, and a majority of voters support reforms such as a binding code of ethics and term limits.

A new POLITICO | Morning Consult poll shows three-in-four voters want the justices bound to an ethics code, the most popular reform proposal in the survey.

Unlike the other two branches of the government, the judiciary is largely immune to public opinion. But the court is starting to feel some pressure, and when it convenes on Monday for the first time since June, it will be grappling not only with a slate of new cases, but also controversies around the justices’ finances and jurisprudence.

The nine justices, unlike lower-court judges, don’t have a formal ethics code — an omission that’s come under scrutiny amid a spate of news stories digging into trips taken and benefits received by Clarence Thomas, and, to a lesser degree, Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor.

Those investigations, combined with some high-profile decisions on issues like abortion that […]

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