A new General Social Survey, run by NORC at the University of Chicago, showed that the confidence in the Supreme Court is at a five-decade low.
According to the latest survey, only 17 percent of respondents claimed they had a “great deal” of confidence in the Supreme Court in 2022. This marks an 11-point decline from the previous year when 26 percent had stated the same. There was also a sharp increase in those who stated they hardly had any confidence in the country’s highest court, from 21 percent in 2021 to 35 percent in 2022.
From those surveyed, 43 percent said they had “only some” confidence in the court, marking another large decrease from the 53 percent that had expressed the same position in 2021.
A large difference in the levels of confidence was also noted along partisan lines, with 26 percent of Republicans claiming they had a “great deal” of confidence in the high court, while only 9 percent of Democrats stated the same for 2022. A year earlier the difference between respondents that belonged to the two different parties had been only 3 percent, with 25 percent of Democrats and 28 percent of Republicans having confidence in the court. However, those results vastly changed following the overturning of Roe v. Wade last June, which resulted in multiple states enacting abortion bans.
Recently the court has come under fire again following the ProPublica reports about Justice Clarence Thomas accepting gifts from GOP megadonor Harlan Crow without ever disclosing them.
