(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
It’s not really news that the Supreme Court, as an institution, is unpopular. Basically every time there’s a new poll about the institution it’s a new low. Which, you know, isn’t great for our system of government, but not particularly surprising — Elena Kagan was out there as a Cassandra telling the Court that when they fucked around (stealing seats, shadow docket, stripping rights) they’d find out.
But the latest Supreme Court poll (from USA Today/Ipsos) gets into more nuance than all that, looking at the favorability ratings of each individual justice. And man, people do not like Clarence Thomas.
It was only two short years ago that the favorability rating of Justice Thomas was positive +9 points. But since that April 2022 poll, a lot has happened. There was the disastrous Dobbs decision that undid 50 years of precedent and took reproductive rights away from millions, we found out Ginni Thomas (Clarence’s wife) was a supporter of the January 6th rioters, and despite this, Thomas refused to recuse himself from any cases related to the insurrection, and there were so so so many revelations about the luxury gifts Thomas received and repeatedly failed to disclose them.
It’s left a pretty terrible impression on the majority of Americans. And his favorability numbers reflect that — he’s at negative 15 percentage points. That’s a whopping 24 point swing from those 2022 numbers.
That’s pretty bad, but as reported by The Hill, every single conservative justice saw a double digit drop in their favoribility.
The recent poll shows all conservative justices declining in their net favorability ratings by at least 10 points. All currently have negative net favorability, when none did in 2022. Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s net favorability was the lowest in 2022, at 0 percentage points.
And it’s not some free-floating discontent with the institution, but specific issues with the Republican-appointed justices. Wanna know how I know that? Each of the liberal justices on the Court have *positive* favorability ratings, ranging from +11 to +16.
But it gets even more pointed. The same poll also revealed the majority of REPUBLICANS (and Dems and Independents, but like duh) support President Joe Biden’s SCOTUS reform proposals. America is basically saying the Court needs to go on a PIP, because we are not happy with how they’re progressing in the role. Let’s see if the country actually has the political will to actually follow through though.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @[email protected].