The Supreme Court is once again under attack from those calling for packing, or even eliminating, the institution as hopelessly ideological and divided.
The Philadelphia Inquirer recently proclaimed that “The Supreme Court’s conservative majority keeps choosing ideology over impartiality.”
Other media outlets reported “devastating” polling showing the Court as unpopular and losing institutional respect.
It is all clearly alarming — despite being entirely untrue.
Looking at the actual rulings disproves the argument of a “biased” court.
The Court ruled unanimously in more than 44% of cases, slightly up from the prior year.
When you add the roughly 11% of opinions that were 8-1 and 6% that were 7-1 or 7-2, the rate of unanimous or nearly unanimous jumps to 62%.
In over 77% of cases, there was no ideological split in the resulting opinions.
While slightly up, the ideological split emphasized in the coverage is found in less than a quarter of the cases.
Now look at those supposed ideologically besieged liberal justices.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson had the lowest percentage in the majority in the last term.
However, she was still in the majority in 72% of cases.
Crossing the prez
Jackson even agreed with Justice Samuel Alito in 49% of the cases and with Justice Clarence Thomas in half of the cases.
The narrative also ignores major losses by the Trump administration in cases dealing with birthright citizenship, mail-in ballots, tariffs, the Federal Reserve Board members and even Trump’s personal defamation case.
Just this week, the court issued a ruling that President Trump called “a big loss for Republicans” in rejecting a mail-in ballot change for the next election.
Those cases saw conservatives voting with their liberal colleagues.
Indeed, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Justice Neil Gorsuch are generally viewed as “in play” in a variety of cases in creating mixed majorities.
Critics aren’t just wrong that the court is biased, it’s incorrect that the Supremes are particularly unpopular.
A recent Marquette Law School poll shows that the court remains slightly underwater in popularity — with 47% favor, 53% disfavor.
Not great, but those numbers are still more popular than Congress or the two major political parties.
The unpopularity of Congress hit a whopping 86% this year.
Gallup found that only 10% of the American people hold a favorable view of Congress.
Trump’s popularity stands at around 40%.
So the Supreme Court has the highest approval rate and is massively more popular than Congress.
Yet, these members want to trash the most popular institution among the three branches.
Plenty of unanimity
This term is shaping up as another blockbuster, with major cases on gun rights, parental rights, immigration, climate change and other issues.
Some cases will break along a 6-3 ideological divide, but many more will be decided by unanimity or mixed majorities, as in past years.
That problem is that many in the media and politics will continue to demonize the court for those cases upon which they disagree and ignore the many cases upon which most of the justices agree.
That includes exaggerated claims of the court “killing democracy.”
The move to pack the court is based on a long-standing radical agenda to change the constitutional system on the left.
The court is standing in the way and these figures know that it is not easy to get a free people to give up on protections for those freedoms.
They have to be very angry or very afraid.
As a result, the court will resume hearing cases in an atmosphere of rage directed at its institution.
But make no mistake about it.
This court continues to function as designed as a principled, independent institution.
On our 250th anniversary, we should celebrate, not demonize, our highest court.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
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